


Hearts bound by a phantom thread

by songofproserpine



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BPD, Catharsis Ending, Dreamsharing, Emotional Baggage, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Rey Needs A Hug, Slow Burn Rey/Kylo Ren, Soulmates, Tender Sex, The Force works in Dreamsharing and Empath-having ways ok just trust me, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-04 12:40:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14020458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofproserpine/pseuds/songofproserpine
Summary: For the first time in Rey's life, she finally has a place to call her own. Everything seems perfect--new job, new apartment, a new chance to begin again. The one problem? She's forced to wake up every night thanks to her neighbor's night terror-induced screams. When she goes to investigate, Rey discovers something odd: no one can hear him screaming—no one, except for her.





	1. Reaching out with eyes closed

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is basically a companion fic to Chelsea Wolfe's 2015 album, "Abyss." (Back in MY day, song fics had the lyrics woven through it *shakes a fist*).
> 
> I'm going to be dealing with a few possibly troubling content matter in this fic, namely referencing past abuse, self-harm, and coding a character as BPD. I'm a survivor/haver of all three, so please understand that I'm not just pulling from a grab-bag of painful things for the heck of it. I write this fic in the hopes of being free in some small way, and in seeing how two characters I adore/see similar traits in would work things out as well. My therapist would be proud.
> 
> That being said--there is referenced self-harm in this chapter.

"The souls that throng the flood  
Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow'd:  
In Lethe's lake they long oblivion taste,  
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.  
Long has my soul desir'd this time and place..."  
– Vergil’s _The Aeneid_

* * *

 

Rey woke up to the sound of screaming.

It was a man’s voice, deep and almost feral. His howls were wordless shrieks, long and loud, bitten off at the end as if he were being choked.

And maybe he was. He was screaming loud enough to wake the whole damn building, and despite living in the one part of Brooklyn that seemed to pay people to make noise at all hours, Rey knew that there were very few things New Yorkers considered sacred. The right to never be reminded of their neighbors was one of them.

Strange, then, that she couldn’t hear any other sound. No barking dogs, no wailing children torn from the arms of sleep. No voices raised in fury, seeking to silence the other unwelcome sound. Just this man, and his ragged, raw voice.

Rey rubbed her eyes, shook herself free of the abruptly ended dream, and staggered out of her bedroom. She passed through the dark narrow hall, pausing only to undo the locks on her apartment door before marching into the corridor. She was still half awake by the time she made it to the last door on the left, the source of all the screaming.

Suppressing a yawn, she slapped her hand in three sets of two against the black door. “D’you mind?” she yelled, pressing her lips to the place where the door would open. “Some people are trying to sleep!”

A small gap of silence squeezed itself in between her voice and the man’s last scream. She heard a distant thump, and started to chew on her lip.

Just as it occurred to Rey that, perhaps, it was not the wisest idea to stand in front of the door of the neighbor she’d just recently been yelling at, that very same door flew open.

Rey blinked and found herself facing a bare chest. She slowly tilted her eyes up, up past the apple of the man’s throat that bobbed with his ragged, jagged breathing, up to his own eyes. _Strange._ They almost looked familiar.

The man's gaze was like a knife cutting through the space between them. “What do you want?” he demanded. His voice was low but not fierce. It was like a beast too weak to defend itself, but just angry enough to give a few swipes.

“I want you to shut up so I can get some sleep,” she replied. Bad tempers had never frightened Rey before, not when she’d been shunted through all the worst the foster care system had to offer. That wasn’t going to change now--even if the man towered over her and looked like he could benchpress three of her without breaking a sweat.

He was, however, sweaty _now_ , almost as if he'd been running. His neck was flushed red, and she thought she saw a few scrapes, long whorls of white split through with blood. The man frowned down at her. It was an expression that required the full effort of his face: his brows furrowed, his eyes darted about like a bird looking for a place to land. He ran a hand over his mouth and scratched at the shadow of stubble on his chin.

“It’s never been a problem before…” he said, almost to himself.

 _I find that hard to believe._ Rey worked hard to keep her expression from showing any trace of doubt. She suppressed enough to lift just one eyebrow, and considered that a success. “Well it’s a problem now,” she told him, stealing another glance at his bare chest. He was absurdly well-muscled, and thankfully only _half_ naked. That alone would have been reason to stare, but there was something else that held Rey’s attention, something else besides the nagging sense of familiarity that she couldn't quite place.

There were strange pale red weals marring his otherwise unmarked chest. They looked like scars and newly healed gouges, twisted keloids and the crisp, almost surgically precise wisps from razor marks or broken glass. They got worse the lower she looked, almost as if he—or whoever had made those scars—were tracing the muscles and veins underneath, creating a patchwork of pain, turning his pale skin into a collection of split and bleeding seams.

The man took in a long breath, and his ribs strained against the scrapes that held their shape. Rey’s breath caught in the sharp snap of her mouth. Just the sight of these scars, and even the wounds that were only freshly healed, sent off wave after wave of matching pain beneath her skin. She ached in all the corresponding places where his own hurts bloomed.

But how? How? She shut her eyes and saw the fission of pain passing between them, like electricity thrumming through wires. Nausea flooded through Rey’s belly, rising up her throat and turning her tongue metallic and sharp. She made a fist and pressed it against her stomach, once, twice. Not hard enough to be a punch, but just enough to take her mind off the other hurt. Tears burned in her eyes, and she twisted her head to the side, hoping to wipe them free before the man noticed.

He noticed. Instead of moving back into his apartment, retreating behind the shield of his door, the man simply watched as Rey shed her tears. She chanced a glance at his face, his chest, and listened to him breathing. There was something hungry in the sound, as if his lungs were straining free of the bones that kept them safe.

Eventually, Rey found the courage to look him in the eyes again, and she heard him sigh. Low, quiet. Relieved. His breathing soon evened out, but his eyes never lost that haunted intensity.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Rey.” Her voice cracked like water over ice. “You?”

He thought for a moment, steadying one hand against the doorframe as if to hold himself up. “Ben,” he said, his voice hushed, reverent.

He looked like a Ben. He also looked like he needed about a week's worth of sleep, but Rey wasn't about to let that thought slip. “Well—hello, Ben. Please keep the noise down.” She nodded, hoped her tears stayed in their proper place, and began to turn away.

“Wait.” The word fell free of his lips just as his hand darted out for her.

Ben’s fingers passed in a ghost of a touch against Rey's shoulder, but it burned like hellfire. She scraped her teeth along the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.

“How could you hear me?” he asked. His voice was like a fist in the gut, and she winced around the sound.

Shoulders raised, heart heavy like lead, Rey said, "I’m pretty sure the whole bloody block could hear you. You weren't exactly quiet."

“No they didn’t.” He persisted, speaking faster now, propelled by the fury of his own momentum. “They didn’t because they can’t. They _never_ hear me."

They stared at each other in a silence as tense as a garrote. Ben's hand, the one that had grazed her shoulder, fell back against his hip. He spread his fingers wide, straining the bones.

"Who are you?" he asked.  
  
"No one." The words came fast, an automatic response meant to deflect attention. Rey cringed as she said it, fighting off twenty years’ worth of prying eyes and hard fists and classmates with too many questions she can’t answer.  
  
But Ben didn't believe her--or perhaps he didn't care. He leaned in, studying her with a new look. Hunting, no longer haunted. "I've been having night terrors for years now--probably before you were even born." His throat tightened at the confession, and she saw him slam his hand against his hip once, twice, again, again. Hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make him grunt with the effort.  
  
Rey stared at him, bewildered. Why punish yourself for speaking your own words? Who had taught him that?  
  
"No one's noticed," he continued, a little breathless, "No one's asked about it. Not my parents. Not my friends. Not my master. No one—except _you_."

 _Master?_ There was a lot of strange to unpack in those sentences. It was also a very strange thing to lie about—and Rey was quite certain that it is, indeed, a lie. But what could be gained from telling it? Trust? Pity? Her eyes made a quick sweep of Ben’s face. No, he doesn’t seem interested in either.

Ben's eyes are hungry, his face with all its striking, slightly uneven features—the large nose, the long ears, the wide mouth that makes her wonder what it must be like to kiss him, taste him, have him.

Rey shook her head, but the thoughts refused to scatter. She hoped the hallway light was dim enough for him not to see her flushed cheeks.

“You don’t believe me.” It was not a question, and there was no room to argue otherwise.

“Why should that matter?” she asked, mirroring his hard expression, his flat stare. But Rey has always been a poor study of the masks other people can wear; she can never hide the hurt at work in her heart, nor keep it from showing on her face.

Ben’s mouth twisted like a wound, and his gaze turned flinty, hard. His next words were a hammer striking against the glass of her heart, but when he spoke, _he’s_ the one that sounds broken.

“It doesn’t,” he said, flinging the words in her face before he stepped back and slammed the door shut.

Rey waited for her heart to stop thudding against her chest before she turned away and went back to her apartment. She stumbled into bed, half in a daze, and curled up beneath the blankets. She slipped her knuckles in between her teeth and bit down. The tears fell anyway.

Down the hall, separated from Rey by half a dozen walls, Ben slipped his long, scarred hands under his pillow, bent them into fists, and whispered Rey's name beneath the shroud of bone white sheets. Her name soon became a prayer, a plea, a piece of peace he craved and feared. He said her name until he barely has any room to breathe.

Eventually, the two of them fell asleep, only to find themselves face to wide-eyed, disbelieving face in the same dream—and Ben did not scream again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you want, hmu on tumblr @ sansaoftheborealvalley, or on my reylo-specific sideblog, reyloshrine~


	2. my heart is a tomb, an empty room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey stared at her hand, the same one that had touched the door. It was stained red, dripping with blood so thick it could be paint.
> 
> She shut her eyes and listened. Something was moving behind the door. Its pace was sluggish, its steps heavy and stumbling. She heard the door tremble on its hinges, pushing out and in, almost like a heart—
> 
> —and then woke up with a start.
> 
> Ben was screaming again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know i said this is a companion fic to chelsea wolfe's "abyss" album--and it still is--but i wrote this chapter while listening to [this hikaru utada song](https://youtu.be/JxHubxeh8J4) on loop. it's SO good, y'all. makes me wanna go back to my japanese studies all over again.

Gradually, thankfully, Rey’s life fell back into its steady, pre-Ben rhythm. She took the train into the city for her morning classes at Hunter, chugged a mug of coffee through back to back physics and engineering classes, and capped off the first half of her day by having lunch with her friends (Paige and Rose, if their schedules allowed, but mostly Poe and Finn, who were practically sewed at the hip and more than happy to make room for Rey).

In the late afternoon, she’d head back to Brooklyn for her part-time job at The Mad Batter, a patisserie that had won state and nation-wide baking contests for seven years running. That was mostly thanks to the skills of the owner, Ms. Holdo, but lately Rey had helped contribute a few blue-ribbon designs, too. Rey’s latest idea for a Horsehead Nebula croquembouche was, as Ms. Holdo put it, _“sublimely inspired.”_ And she’d even had a  brooch made for Rey to wear on her uniform, a little cluster of stars with the brightest, deepest blue threaded through. It complemented the color of the shop’s uniform wonderfully, a glitter of silver and blue against the simple pale purple button-down dress—and it was also the first gift Rey had ever received.

As Holdo pinned the brooch in place, stringing it between the starched white collar of Rey’s uniform, the older woman’s eyes gleamed with pride. No one had ever looked at her like that—not teachers, not foster parents, not the overtaxed social workers assigned to her care. Rey had taken both the gift and the compliment to heart, especially when Holdo insisted on making the nebula croquembouche one of the shop’s signature designs. She even gave Rey happy permission to start experimenting with other recipe ideas, promising to put each one on display in the shop’s front window.

Rey wasn’t yet sure how to thank her boss for all this unsought generosity and encouragement. It seemed like the bakery equivalent of a proud parent hanging up their child’s exam on the fridge.

It wasn’t exactly an unwelcome comparison. Ms. Holdo was the closest Rey had ever come to having a mother or an aunt-like figure in her life, but she didn't know what to do with this fact, or the feelings it caused. She turned the idea over in her mind like weighing a stone, wondering if she was foolish for being so sentimental, or if she'd be a total, ungrateful ass for rejecting such kindness. Amilyn Holdo was certainly the age for a mother, and sometimes, in the dark desperate nights when sleep was out of reach, Rey liked to imagine that Holdo might have even _known_ her birth mother at some point, despite Holdo being a life-long resident of New York and Rey being thoroughly, undeniably English.

But why else would this woman be so kind to her? Why else would she care, if it wasn’t from some kind of pity?

All these desperate hopes aside, the lean, willowy woman was an undeniable figure of grace and determination in Rey’s life, in both appearance and spirit. Her short, curly hair—dyed various pastel shades, and always matching her lipstick and nails—was kept pinned back from her angular face. This allowed for the full effect of her bright eyes and charming smiles to captivate whatever lucky soul fell under her attention. Her voice was always warm and strong, like silk-clad steel. It was the sort of voice that Rey had mentally assigned to mothers and librarians and poets and other pillars of comfort and creativity. And Holdo never, not once, failed to ask how Rey was doing. As if she really cared to know.

Rey usually answered these questions truthfully. But that before she’d met Ben, before she heard his screams, before he loomed in her thoughts like a pouty trespasser. She felt a sharp, nagging pain that spread out from her heart and scratched down her ribs each time he strolled into her mind. This haunting, hurting man had carved out a place in Rey’s life that left her stumbling to accommodate the space and the shape of him where there was once little room for anything more than her own worries. And soon no matter where she was—in class, at lunch, scrubbing the tables at work—Rey found her mind slipping back to replay the worst parts of their conversation, like a record wearing itself thin against the needle.

_“What do you want?”_

_“I want you to shut up so I can get some sleep.”_

Rey cringed at the memory, as if the echoing words could hit like a fist. Did she really said that? Where’d she ever get the nerve?

_“Why should that matter?”_

_“It doesn’t.”_

Had Ben told the truth? Rey wasn’t sure which was worse: that he did care, somehow, so soon into their acquaintance—or that he was honest, and their strange meeting and connection meant nothing. And maybe he was all too happy to forget about her, and she was just wasting far too much time and space in her heart on a man who was, by all accounts, a storm forced into blood and bone.

_“Why should that matter?”_

_“It doesn’t.”_

But it did, it did— _he_ did. And Rey didn’t like that one damn bit.

 

A week passed. Rey did not see Ben during the day, nor did she hear him at night. Even without his noisy interruptions, her sleep was fragmented and dreamless. She awoke each morning surprised to see the sun, surprised that so much time could have passed while her body still felt sluggish and limp, as if she hadn’t rested at all.

More than once, Rey thought about knocking on Ben’s door or leaving a note in his mailbox down in the lobby. That wouldn’t be too weird, right? She could justify that sort of curiosity, even if she was annoyed at how much time she spent thinking about him every day. But whenever she passed the little mail slots on the ground floor, her courage fled as if it were being chased. And when she breezed by Ben’s door, she would hold her breath, duck her head, and hope that it didn’t open.

 _Just forget about him._ And she tried, she really did. But his silence, his absence, and the continuing pang of pain she felt in her heart, as if a thread were tied between them, from one rib to another, was more than a little suspicious. Why did she feel this way about a stranger? Why didn't he leave his apartment? Didn’t he have a job? Well, maybe he worked from home. But still--didn’t he have groceries to buy, friends to see? His near total shut-in status intrigued her, and each time she let herself think on it during the lulls of her day—when she was cleaning, or finishing her homework, or getting ready for bed—her heart let out another fresh wave of harsh, stabbing pangs.

How _lonely_ Ben must be. It hurt just to think about.

Eight days after their first disastrous conversation, Rey went to bed trying to imagine what it must be like, to be surrounded by so many people and have no connection to them at all. It wasn’t hard to imagine at all. That had been her own life up until two years ago, when she arrived in New York with a scholarship and full ride to Hunter University. But she was lucky—most kids punted around the foster care system hardly made it out of secondary school, let alone bothered with getting degrees. But her ambition was born of survival, and nothing else.

Surviving made for a hollow life. No future could be built on it, and hopes rarely ever took root.

Rey drifted off to sleep a little after midnight. A dream was waiting for her. It was a familiar dream, one that always filled her with dread.

She was walking down a long, seemingly endless hallway. Everything—the floor, the ceiling, the walls—was a deep, shrouded black. The only lights came from beneath the doors on either side of her, doors that locked whenever she passed.

When she first started having these dreams as a child, Rey would go from door to door, trying every knob. Sometimes she would knock, or lay down on her side to peer beneath the gaps between the door and the floor, but all she could see was a bright, blinding light, the kind that burned to look at for too long. As Rey got older and the hallway only got longer, she learned to stop knocking on the doors completely—why bother bothering? She knew they wouldn’t open. Now all she wanted was for the hallway to end.

In that dream on that particular night, the longer Rey walked, the longer the hallway stretched on. Impatience burned in her gut like a mug of coffee left in the urn for too long.

“Why bother bothering?” she asked herself—but it wasn’t her voice, nor did it come from her mouth. It was a child’s voice, soft, strained, the kind that whispered to keep itself company in the dark. And it was coming from behind her.

Rey turned. The hallway behind her had disappeared. That long, echoing, endless black corridor was gone, leaving only a small bit of space. There was but a few steps between where she stood and a long, blood red door—a door that was slowly starting to open.

The light that spilled from the door was weak and silver, like moonlight straining through the clouds. Rey stepped closer, holding her breath. Her fingers trembled as she pressed them against the door, but she drew them back at once. The door was warm, wet—almost _alive_. It shivered at her touch, and from somewhere deep within the room hidden on the other side, she heard a man’s voice.

“Not my parents. Not my friends. Not my master. No one—except you.”

Rey stared at her hand, the same one that had touched the door. It was stained red, dripping with blood so thick it could be paint.

She shut her eyes and listened. Something was moving behind the door. Its pace was sluggish, its steps heavy and stumbling. She heard the door tremble on its hinges, pushing out and in, almost like a heart—

—and then woke up with a start.

Ben was screaming again.

Rey was on her feet in seconds. Her pulse thrummed, erratic and electric, making her veins feel like a live-wire. It was a thrill she found hard to describe, almost as if she’d been both dreading and waiting for this to happen.

 _What’s the difference_? she thought as she hopped into the closest pair of sweatpants. Ben might answer his door in nothing but his boxers, but she didn’t have that kind of nerve. The line between anticipation and dread was razor thin, and often broken.

It took ten seconds for Rey to charge out of her door and down the hall to Ben’s apartment. She knocked once, twice, and pressed her lips to the same place as before. “Ben? It’s Rey. Open up!”

His screams paused, but only for a few seconds. Just long enough to take in a gulp of air. When he started in again, her heart twisted at the new sound. He was _crying._ She was sure of it.

It didn’t take long for her own eyes to burn with tears as well. It hurt to hear him, as if she were listening to her own loneliness echoed back and magnified.

Rey lowered her hand to the knob and gave it an experimental twist. She didn’t expect it to turn—but that’s exactly what it did. She pushed open the door to Ben’s apartment wide enough for her to get a good look inside. The layout was the exact same as hers—long narrow hallway, quick left turn into the kitchen-living room combo, bathroom on the right-hand side, and another small hall that spilled out into the only bedroom.

The screaming was coming from the back of his apartment.

Whispering a quick apology for the intrusion, Rey walked into Ben’s apartment, shut the door with a tight snap, and then took off down the hall. When she got to the doorway of his bedroom, she came to a hard stop.

Ben’s bedroom was a mess. Shattered glass from mirrors and porcelain lamps were scattered across the floor. Some of the shards were ground into glittering powder, as if he’d crushed them beneath his heel. Large, hand-sized dents pockmarked the walls. There were smears of dried blood on the plaster beneath, reminding Rey of bone chips and ash.

She blinked hard, willing her tears to hold off just for a few goddamn more minutes, and moved her attention to the only piece of furniture in the room: the bed. It was completely black. Everything, from the headboard to the frame, to the sheets, blankets, and pillows—all of it pitch black. The only splash of color was Ben himself, shirtless, pale as bone, thrashing against the bed that was barely long enough for him to lay on comfortably. Not that he looked particularly comfortable now, all things considered.

Guilt flooded through Rey’s thoughts, leaving her with a sour taste on the back of her tongue. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be seeing him like this. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair—and then she took a long look at his face.

She could _hear_ Ben. She was sure of it. She could hear that wretched, looping howl that was both raw and weak as clear as anything—but his mouth wasn’t open.

Rey stared, wide eyed, mute with horror, as Ben twisted and heaved on his bed. His large hands clawed at the tangle of sheets knotting around his legs with every kick, but he otherwise wasn’t making a sound.

And then she finally understood. His screams were coming from inside her head.

“Why is this happening to us?” It wasn’t a question as much as it was a plea, empty, limp, lifeless.

Rey’s voice was the only other sound in the room apart from Ben’s ragged breathing. And though she had barely whispered, the effect of her voice was instantaneous. Ben's screams ended as quickly as they'd begun. Something in Ben’s furrowed expression began to shift, smoothing out his brows, removing the tension from his jaw and bared teeth. His eyes fluttered but did not open, and Rey watched as his hands slowly let go of the sheets and turned until his palms were bared, open, as if he were waiting for her to take his hand.

She moved without thinking. Doubt and fear crowded her mind, demanding her attention. They wouldn’t have it, just like whatever Ben was seeing wouldn’t keep its stranglehold on him. Not if she had anything to say about it.

Rey hunched next to the bed, keeping herself just out of reach should Ben wake up. “Relax, Ben. I can hear you,” she said, her voice thick with tears. She held out her hand and gently, like a whisper, like the ghost of a kiss, began to trace the lines of his palm. He flinched. When he relaxed, she continued. “I’m right here.”

Rey watched as Ben's long fingers slowly began to curl inward, like a flower folding in reverse, until they pressed against her skin. He was so _cold_ —how was that possible? His face was drenched in sweat, turning his long, wavy black hair into a clumped mess that clung to his temples and cheeks. She leaned in and used her free hand to brush a few strands of hair free from his face. The shadows around his eyes were like bruises, reminding her of the scars and scrapes that decorated his chest.

He sighed at her touch, murmuring softly in his sleep.

The longer Rey watched over Ben while he slept, gently squeezing and then releasing his hand whenever he began to tremble again, the more her fears fell silent. She wasn’t afraid of him. Not really. He was intimidating, yes, and he clearly had a temper, but his fury was a force all too familiar to her. It was no different from the own anger she kept buried down inside. Hidden and seething. She’d felt that same anger as a child, forced to defend herself on the playground against whatever classmate had decided to pick on her that week. She’d felt it as a teenager, sullen and sharp, breaking fingers and stomping on the feet of men too old to be paying her any sort of attention. She felt it even now, as a newly made adult, every time she saw Paige and Rose smile at each other, falling into the easy comfort that could only come from being family.

It wasn’t jealousy. Not really. It was something else, a feeling darker and rooted deep, born not from wanting what someone else had, but from knowing with a bitter certainty that it could never be hers.

Ridiculous, but there you have it. What bit of human behavior wasn't, in some way, absurd? And how could you mourn something you never had? And yet she found a way. Hearts were funny like that.

Slowly, as if learning the shape of him, Rey ran her fingers across the scars on Ben’s ribs before placing her free hand over his heart. It fluttered under her touch, bright, persistent, stubborn. She couldn’t help but smile.

Ben was a walking, breathing, seething wound—and somehow, impossibly, like a miracle born of misery, she could hear that hurt as it raged, alive and wild and aching inside him. It was a pain Rey knew all too well, a pain she had buried in the grave of her heart over and over again. It was an ache that tasted of iron and ash, like a mouth full of blood. If you didn’t spit it out or get rid of it in some way, you would only choke.

And maybe that's what these screams were--they were Ben's way of getting rid of it.

Rey turned her head to the side and yawned against her shoulder. It was late, later than she usually let herself stay awake when she had classes the next morning. Her body grew heavy with the sleep she held at bay, but each time she thought about drifting off, she remembered that was, perhaps, not the wisest of ideas. Not while she was still a trespasser.

Eventually she lost the battle with her exhaustion. Careful not to wake Ben up, Rey slowly tilted her wrist and looked at her watch. 2:35. She blinked. Two hours had passed, and she’d been none the wiser. Marveling at all those quiet minutes lost, Rey leaned in until he lips were all but kissing Ben’s ear.

“Ben. I have to go.”

Again, the effect of her words was instant. Ben’s hand tightened on hers like a trap, and he held on almost hard enough to hurt. She let out a hiss of pain, and just like that, without any hesitation, as if her pain was his own, Ben let her go.

Rey chewed on her lip, her teeth pulling and scraping and clawing until she tasted blood. She couldn’t leave like this. She _shouldn’t._ Not without something else, some warm word or some bit of comfort. Anything to get him through the night.

Twisting at the hip, she squinted into the dark. Crumpled up bits of paper and broken pens were scattered around the wreckage on the floor. She snatched up the closest ones, smoothed out the paper, and flipped it onto the back. In a brisk, looping scrawl, Rey wrote down her number. _Call me if you need me,_ she wrote, underlining the sentence twice. _Sorry for the intrusion. I’ll knock louder next time._

Rey slipped the note into the same hand she’d been holding. She pushed herself to her feet and turned from the room. She didn’t look back. Not once. It was already hard enough to leave.

 

The same dream was waiting for Rey when she got back to her apartment. The same red door was open in front of her, and it once more trembled beneath her touch. Rey pressed her ear against it and closed her eyes, listening close. She knew that Ben was on the other side. She could  _feel_ him, feel his breath as he sucked it in and let it out, slow and steady, as if he were sleeping peacefully.

“I lied,” she heard him say. His voice was heavy. It fell through her heart like an iron moon, hard and bright. “I lied to you. The other day.”

_“Why should that matter?”_

_“It doesn’t._ ”

Rey let out a little laugh. “I know.” She ran her fingers against the door, clearing away the red to reveal a crisp white door beneath. It was the bright white, clear, clean. Pure. “Don’t do it again,” she said.

“I won’t,” he breathed. The warmth of his voice made her shiver, almost like he had kissed her. “I promise.”

 

Four hours later, Rey’s alarm clock blared to life. She pummeled it into silence, turned onto the cold, empty side of her bed, and fell back into a warm sleep. She didn’t hear the footsteps in the hall, the heavy, lumbering tread that was curiously in sync with her own heartbeat. She didn’t hear the whispering sigh of a note passed under her door. Nor did she hear the gentle thud of a large, shaking hand pressed against her front door, moving in just the same way her own hand had in the dream from the night before.

She didn't wake up until 2:14 that afternoon, and she kicked the note down the hall as she rushed out the door. She looked down. Her heart was a hummingbird buzzing and whirring against her chest as she peeled off the tape and opened the letter.

A key dropped out. She bent fast to catch it, and then held it out to study. It was the same shape as the one for her apartment door, but the teeth were just a little different. Made for a different lock.

Closing Ben’s spare key in her left hand, Rey held the letter steady in her right and began to read.

 _Stop by whenever you want._ His words were small and cramped, as if his hand couldn’t quite keep up with the flow of his thoughts. _I don’t mind._

 __ ~~Sorry~~  
Thank you  
I know it’s not fair but  
I’ll call if I have to. I promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! so this update came pretty fast because i'm kind of in a bad headspace and today is a really bad anniversary, but what better way to work through it than to write some angsty fic?
> 
> seriously, though. i hope this isn't overkill. it's been a while since i worked on a pure angst fic, although i'm determined to add some levity into this so it isn't totally suffocating.
> 
> also, you can find me at my tumblr (sansaoftheborealvalley), or at my reylo-specific sideblog (reyloshrine). thanks for reading!


	3. Lose myself to something, to someone else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A muscle below Ben’s left eye began to twitch. “I had trouble with sleeping,” he said slowly, measuring the words.
> 
> “Oh.”
> 
> “No, I mean—I was having trouble because I was sleeping. And it bothered me.”
> 
> Rey tried to make sense of that. She failed. “What?”
> 
> Ben sighed. It was a huffy, frustrated sound, and she tried not to smile. “It’s… I’m not used to this. I have pills to knock me out but they hardly work and with my luck I’ll just end up suffocating.” He said all this in a rush, as if the idea of him dying were just a passing annoyance.
> 
> Rey sat very still, rapt, attentive. Her silence only made Ben more animated—she supposed it helped that he was half hidden in shadow, mostly unseen and free because of it. “But it’s different if you’re around,” he continued, almost hesitant. “I’m different. As long as you’re close by, I can... finally sleep.”

Rey swirled the last French fry on her plate through a streak of ketchup and popped it into her mouth. "Can you think of why someone in this day and age would use the word Master with a straight face?" she asked.

Poe's eyes lit up. "Besides singing along to Metallica?" He asked, grinning.

Finn sighed and elbowed his boyfriend in the side. "Where did that come from?" he asked, raising his voice. Poe was just starting to drum on the table as he and Rose began singing along in strained falsettos to _Master of Puppets._

“I heard one of my neighbors say it," she said. It wasn't a lie, not entirely. Just a slightly bent truth, a little white lie said to avoid another barrage of questions in an already precarious conversation.

"And you didn't think to ask?"

Rey shrugged, not wanting to tell yet another almost-but-not-quite- lie.

Finn frowned, his boyish face suddenly turning grave. "It wasn't, like... some kinda late night TMI conversation, was it?" he asked, one eyebrow lifted.

She rolled her eyes. "no."

"Then I'm all out of ideas."

Rose put down her phone and scowled across the table. "You only had the one," she said.

"Yeah, and that was all I had."

Shaking her head in pity, Rose turned in the booth to face Rey, her short black hair swaying. "Is your neighbor a student?"

"I don't think so," Rey said, thinking back. Ben hinted that he was older than her, although just _how_ old he was still remained a mystery. He hadn't exactly spelled out just what kind of age gap divided them. Three years? Six? Ten? "He could be in grad school, I suppose."

Rose picked up her iced tea and stirred it with her straw. "Maybe he's in SVA or Julliard. Y'know, an artist." She took a long sip and leaned back against the vinyl cushioned booth. "I'm pretty sure artists call their mentors or teachers 'master' if they're all old-fashioned and super respectful." She set her glass down. "Does that sound like this guy?"

Before Rey could respond, Poe rejoined the conversation by flicking his straw wrapper at Rose to get her attention. "Speaking of artists and mentors and whatever—you get up to Madarame's Palace yet? In Persona?"

"Yes!" Rose drew out the word until it was something between a squeal and a hiss.

As the two of them leaned across the table to chatter animatedly about their current video game fixation—and distraction from schoolwork—Finn and Rey shared an exasperated glance.

"You said this guy was a neighbor, right?" he asked. “So why not just ask him? Couldn't hurt, right?"

"I guess so."

Once Poe and Rose returned to a topic that mattered, the conversation shifted onto the real reason for this roundtable discussion at the BB-8 Diner: a desperately last minute study session. Poe had already graduated some years ago, and despite his astrophysics degree—and curiously overcomplicated job at Brookhaven National Lab—he gladly volunteered to, as he put it, look pretty and quiz "you kids" on their notes. It was a responsibility he took about as seriously as anything, which wasn’t much. Although Rey couldn’t help but  be impressed at how carefully Poe would transfer their notes to an ever-increasing collection of flash cards.

As the conversation continued and they ordered their desserts, it didn't take long for Rey's mood to improve. It was all but impossible for her to spend time with her friends and not end up smiling eventually. But she couldn't shake off the shadow that hung over her head, a shadow with a familiar, brooding shape.

As the study session continued, and then quickly dissolved back into freeform chatter, Rey lapsed into a thoughtful, heavy silence. Ben lurked like a ghost on the edges of the conversation; he haunted every silence, flitted through the corners of her vision, until she was spinning in her seat, her eyes searching for a flurry of movement that wasn't there. If her friends noticed, they were gracious enough to say nothing.

She left the diner and headed in to work an hour later, her thoughts still churning around Ben and the silent divide between them. Not even Holdo's raptures about Rey's latest recipe for an Andromeda Galaxy babka could banish her mysterious, troubled neighbor from her thoughts. She kept her head down through the six-hour shift, bid Holdo goodnight, and walked home with her mind still in a fog.

Where _was_ Ben? How was he doing? Did he need her—or was she just so desperate to be needed?

 

Another week passed. Rey passed most of her exams, and could finally look forward to the upcoming Spring break without the fear of tanking her GPA dangling over her head.

Ben didn't text her, nor did she hear so much as a whimper from his room. Rey kept his spare key in her purse all the same, just in case she had to use it.

The hallway still appeared in her dreams, although it was no longer a source of frustration. On the contrary, she was almost glad to see what was once infuriatingly familiar. The red door that trembled and shivered under her hands like a living thing was now almost totally white. She wondered what would happen when it was clean, if it could ever be that way again.

Sometimes she saw Ben's face appear in the gap of the doorway, but the glimpse was always brief, fleeting. She cherished these quick glimpses of him, of his intense gaze peering out over an otherwise carefully guarded expression, but it did little to satisfy her growing desire to see him again. Quite the opposite: these small glances only stoked the flames further, until Rey's ever-restless heart was well on its way to being outright anxious. And though she couldn't be entirely sure how he felt, a small, nagging thought tugged insistently beneath her doubts, a constant reminder that whatever connection bound her and Ben was not a one-sided affair.

Still, without a call or a text or him knocking on her door, Rey didn’t know what else she could do besides wait. She'd done all she could, and the next move was entirely his to make.

In the meantime, she would hope. And dream.

 

One night, when Rey was well on her way to being drunk thanks to four gin and tonics, Paige Tico's birthday party, and a damn good fake I.D., her phone lit up with an unfamiliar number. She thought about letting it go to voicemail, but a small, insistent thought urged against it.

“Helloooo?"she sang into the phone.

There was a pause. "Rey?" a deep, thrilling voice said.

Rey struggled to get the little black straw into her mouth, only to spit it out in surprise. "Ben!" she cried. "What do you want?"

Another pause. "You told me to call you," he said. "In your note. Remember?"

"Yeah, sure, yeah. I remember."

"Are you... are you drunk?"

"Not entirely," she said.

"Are you all right?" he asked. His words came faster now, almost as if he were worried.

"Sure," she said, frowning. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I just... never mind. It's nothing."

As Rey tried to puzzle out why drinking and not being okay would ever enter into Ben's mind as the same thing, she heard Rose call her name. She turned, forced her eyes to focus, and found her friend waving at her from where the little stage next to the bar's karaoke machine.

"You're up next!" Rose cried out. "What song d'you want?"

"Unbreak My Heart!" Rey yelled back, and then realized she still held the phone against her mouth. "Oops. Sorry about your ears."

"It's fine," he grumbled. "I’ve heard that one before. I’ll let you get back to your friends.”

“No, no, don't go!” she said as she walked over to the stage, doing her best not to bump into anyone that stood in her way. “Are _you_ all right? Do you need me?"

Ben paused long enough for Rey to check to see if the call was still connected. finally, he said, “I wouldn't mind seeing you."

"Is that a yes or is that a no?"

"It's a yes--probably. Maybe."

She rolled her eyes. Pity he couldn’t see it. "Fine. Give me five minutes. No, ten. No! Twenty-six. I'll see you soon.” She lowered her phone, and then clapped it back to her face. “Oh, hey, wait! Don't hang up."

"Why...?"

"Because I’m gonna sing and I’ll probably cock it up and you sound like you need a laugh. So why not make it at my voluntary expense?"

Without waiting for his reply, Rey set her phone on top of the teleprompter, focused her ever-blurring vision on the lyrics at the bottom of the screen, and began to sing. Though she couldn't see Ben in that moment in anything more than a memory, she hoped that wherever he was, and however well he could hear her through the connection, he was at least half-smiling at her performance. It was dramatic and ridiculous and, in Rey’s humble opinion, a roaring success.

 

It took Rey seventeen minutes to get from the bar back to her apartment. Ben was waiting for her in the lobby.

"You look awful," he said at once.

Rey glared up at him. It was a little difficult; he seemed to be spinning like a kaleidoscope, blending into a mess of fluorescent white and deep brown and black. "Nice to see you too."

"No, I mean..." he paused and then slowly reached out to steady her shoulders. The spinning stopped, but only briefly. "Do you need help getting upstairs?"

"There's a lift," she said at once, and then mentally sketched out the journey from where she stood to the elevator. "That I'm probably not going to make it to."

The edges of Ben's mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile. "Do you need me to help you?"

Well if he was going to be polite, then so could she. "Yes, please."

With a surprisingly fluid grace, Ben bent at the waist and lifted her into his arms, carefully positioning one hand on her ribs while the other curled around the back of her knees. When he walked, his steps were unhurried, nor did his breathing turn rough with the effort. It was almost as if he were taking a casual stroll instead of bridal carrying his too drunk neighbor into the elevator because she couldn't trust her own two feet.

Rey watched as her arms looped around his neck, half aware that her desire to do so had resulted in her doing just that, without hesitation. "D’you do this often?" she asked as they stepped into the lift.

With his hands otherwise occupied, Ben had no choice but to use the tip of his nose to push the button for their floor. "What do you mean?"

"I mean you're carrying me like I weigh nothing. So either this is a habit or a hobby." She frowned and tilted her head to the side. Was it her imagination, or had it grown heavier? Her cheek met something warm and solid. _His shoulder,_ she realized, and felt something warm shift inside her tummy. "Is this how you pick up girls? Pun absolutely intended."

Ben waited for Rey to look at him before he replied. "No," he said. His usually guarded expression was slowly starting to soften at the edges. The longer he looked at her, the more he seemed to shed that careful mask. "Just you."

"Well lucky me," Rey said, kicking her feet up and down. "Thanks."

He fell silent, and soon so did she.

As the doors opened onto their floor, Ben paused. "Which one is yours again?" he asked, looking down the hall. "It's been a while."

"304," she said. "And you can put me down now, if you want." She could probably manage the short walk from here to the front door—significant emphasis on probably.

It seemed that Ben trusted her judgment, or at least he cared for it more than getting a chance to run his hands over her legs and the side of her chest. He set her down on her feet with such tender care that, crybaby as she was, it brought tears to her eyes. She quickly blinked, banishing the tears as fast as they had come as they left the elevator.

"So… you said you needed me," she blurted out, turning to face him. "That's why you called, right?"

His dark eyes searched Rey's face long enough to make her wonder if he was buying time to put together a believable lie.  _Don't stare,_ she warned herself--and immediately failed. It was too easy to get lost in those eyes.

“I think I’m all right now," he said.

“Are you sure?"

Again his answer came at the end of an extended pause. Something in his eyes shifted, giving way to a look that Rey struggled to understand. It was haunted and hungry and needing and somehow angry all at once. "I'll be fine. Thanks."

Just like in the elevator, Rey watched as her body moved without her realizing she was still technically in charge. She held out her hand and looked up expectantly. "Shake on it?" she said, quietly pleased. Her words were hardly slurred.

Ben’s large hand and long, fingers ever so carefully curled around hers. His hand easily dwarfed hers, and as he pressed his fingers down, she was vividly, keenly, thrillingly aware of how much of his strength was used to be gentle.

They shook hands. "I'm not lying," he said. He still held her hand, and his eyes every now and then would drop from Rey’s face to where their fingers touched.

“Prove it.” The words were out of Rey’s mouth before she could think to refine them. “Invite me in. We can have a sleepover.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Rey smiled up at him. He was so _tall_ ; she had to tilt her head back as if she were staring at a light fixture. If she leaned any further she’d probably topple over. “Invite me in. Sleepover. So I can know you’re as fine as you say you are.”

Rey felt her tummy heave with a sudden lurch as the double meaning of her gin-inspired, brazen words reached her own ears. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, heat flooding into her face. Thank god she was always wearing some blush. It would hide the worst of her chagrin.

“Do you mean that?” was all he asked after a painfully prolonged silence.

“Sure,” she said at once. Her responding smile only widened when she saw the edges of Ben’s mouth curve up, too. “Just… let me get my things. I’ll be there soon.”

After that, Rey had no choice but to enter her apartment and see the rest of this decision through. She managed to avoid cringing at herself as she hastily swapped out her little black dress for a far more comfortable pair of sweatpants and a tank top, her usual nightly attire. But all the quiet reprimands she’d been delaying rushed into her mind as she brushed her teeth.

Rey stared at herself in the mirror, her hands curled around the sink to keep herself steady. “Don’t be a coward,” she told herself, glaring pointedly at her own reflection. “You walked into this, and now you’re going to see it through.” She paused, wondering if she should be worried that she was actually talking to herself. “And try not to get sick on him. He’s got enough problems.”

As Rey counted her breaths, hoping for courage to find a way through the thorny tangle of her doubts, something stirred in the back of her thoughts like a gentle press of fingers—soft, insistent, but not unwelcome. It reminded her of Ben’s handshake, and how tenderly he’d held his fingers against her. She thought once again about how he’d carried her into the lift, cherishing the memory. Her reflection showed a small, shy smile. Any other guy would have probably used that chance as a way to cop a cheap feel—but not Ben. His touch wasn’t clinical, just… careful. And he barely seemed at all bothered by the extra weight in his arms. Considering what she had seen of his body days before, with all those muscles carefully sculpted between the scars, that was hardly a surprise.

“He’s all… sturdy. And solid.” She paused. “Like… a wall. Or a brick.” She shook her head and waved her hands, scattering the thoughts like smoke. “No, no, that’s stupid. Don’t think that, you’ll probably end up saying it.”

Deciding she had delayed the inevitable long enough, Rey crammed her toiletries into her purse, threw a pair of jeans, the cleanest t-shirt she had on hand, and her favorite hoodie over her shoulder, and marched out her apartment door. The lock slid into place with a decisive snap. She hoped all her doubts stayed on the other side of it. They would only distract her, and she needed her mind to be as clear as it possibly could.

She knocked once on Ben’s door as a courtesy, just to let him know it was her, before she pushed her way inside. He was putting the finishing touches on the makeshift bed he was setting up on his couch, but his movements coming to an abrupt halt when Rey walked into view.

“You were gone a while,” he said. His eyes never left her face, but Rey had the distinct impression he was studying her carefully. “Though you changed your mind.”

“It was my idea in the first place,” she reminded him. She set her things down on the floor next to the couch. “And I always see an idea through to the end.”

Ben considered this. “Even the bad ones?” he asked.

Rey smiled. “Especially the bad ones,” she said with a laugh. “That’s how you end up _knowing_ they're bad.”

“That makes sense.” He didn’t sound insincere, and if she looked close enough, she could see the little, shy smile twisting up the edges of his broad, soft mouth.

 _Don’t stare at his lips!_ “Er… Thanks for the bed,” she said, nodding to the couch.

As Rey silently cursed herself for moving from one awkward thought to the next, Ben shrugged and glanced away. “Don’t mention it,” he mumbled, embarrassed. Rey had the distinct impression they were both thinking about his bedroom and the awful state of it since she saw it last.

Casting desperately around for another topic, Rey slowly slid down against the arm of the couch until she was in a somewhat comfortable position. “So. How have you been?”

To her surprise, Ben shook his head. “Don’t,” he said, his hands halfway extended, almost like a shield to guard himself. “Don’t ask me that.”

Where was this coming from all of a sudden? “It’s called a conversation, Ben.” Rey drew a line between herself and where he was standing with her hand. “Y’know, that thing that usually requires two or more people to have. Or do. Or… something.”

Once again, if Ben noticed the double meaning of her words, he didn’t bother to dwell on it. “I don’t want to talk about how I’ve been,” he grumbled, downright pouting now.

Rey shrugged. “Then don’t. Ask me instead.”

“Why would I do that?” he said at once, not giving her room to speak. “You were at a party with your friends. You’re doing fine.”

“You don’t know that,” she fired back.

“You’re the one who told me!”

This was all going downhill fast. She felt as if she’d been trying to walk down a steep hill, only to stumble and then suddenly realize she had no balance at all. “I didn’t come over here to be yelled at, you know.”

Rey watched as a muscle in Ben’s jaw tightened. He ran his fingers through his hair and began to pace up and down the room. His long, loping strides and frustrated expression reminded her of a creature measuring the length of his cage.

“I’m messing this up,” he said, not looking at her. His hands curled into fists. Rey watched them tremble and noticed with a low, dull throb of pain that there were new scabs on his knuckles. “That’s the last thing I wanted to happen and it’s the first… first fuckin’ thing I do.” Each word was sharp, honed, like the twist of a knife.

“Ben, you’re fine. Relax.”

“I _hate_ that word,” he said, as if every syllable were laced with venom. At Rey’s silence, Ben came to a stop and glanced down at her. “I’m still messing this up.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to start with an apology,” she said, but even as she spoke she had to cover her mouth to hide her yawn.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his words and tone were all wrong. They were flat, automatic, and she could only look on helplessly while that hauntingly guarded expression came over his face again. “You’re tired. I won’t keep you up.”

Rey leaned forward, reaching for his hand. But he moved it away at the last second, and that small, sudden movement stung worse than any of his harsh words.

“Goodnight,” he said, and before she could reply, Ben stomped off to his room. He didn’t shut the door, but the space between them was more forbidding and isolating than any shut door could ever be.

She curled up on the couch. As she drifted into sleep, she realized belatedly, distantly, that the silence from down the hall was neither stony nor bitter, but a sign that Ben, too, was resting comfortably. She hoped it was thanks to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone~  
> sorry that this is kindasorta slow-burny but... apparently that's a thing people like. so i hope it works here!
> 
> my goal is to try to get a chapter out a day, since i'm hyper-motivated / got a pretty good outline for each bit / need to just... get all this off my chest and channel it through the ship. so hopefully these daily updates are a nice treat?? and sorry if, in the future, i ever let any extended length of time pass between chapters. yknow how it goes.
> 
> as always, feel free to drop me a line on here or on tumblr, if you have it! my main's sansaoftheborealvalley, but my reylo specific blog is reyloshrine.  
> thanks for reading!♥


	4. In the mouth of the beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please.” His mouth shaped the word like a kiss. “I want you to come with me.”
> 
> Rey kept her eyes on his lips. His whole face seemed to soften under her gaze, but in no place was this more obvious than his mouth. And for the briefest flash of a moment, she saw white and pink, as he worried his bottom lip with a bite and then smoothed the skin with his tongue.
> 
> “Get dressed,” she said. “Pack something warm. We've got a train to catch.”

A loud thud and a muffled curse jolted Rey awake several hours later. She fumbled for her phone in the dark, peering blearily at the too bright screen. _6:26._ So early! And yet there was so little light in the world, as if the sun were holding himself back like a secret.

Rey twisted the phone away from her bleary eyes and pointed it towards the sound. She recognized a dark form taking shape, shifting and twisting on the floor beneath her. “Ben? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, in a tone that suggested there was, indeed, something wrong.

She yawned, her jaw cracking with the effort. She felt as warm and heavy as a bone lowered into a dinner soup. “Why aren’t you in bed?” she asked, placing her phone back on the floor.

A passing car briefly illuminated the room in one long white arc. It lasted just enough for Rey to see a muscle under Ben’s left eye start to twitch. “I had trouble with sleeping,” he said slowly, measuring the words.

“Oh.”

“No, I mean—I was having trouble _because_ I was sleeping. And it bothered me.”

Rey tried to make sense of that. She failed. “What?”

Ben sighed. It was a huffy, frustrated sound, all impatience. “It’s… I’m not used to this. I have pills to knock me out but they hardly work and with my luck I’ll just end up suffocating instead of sleeping.” He said all this in a rush, as if the idea of him dying were just a passing annoyance.

Rey lay there, rapt, attentive. Her silence only made Ben more animated. She supposed it helped that he was half hidden in shadow, mostly unseen and free because of it. “But it’s different if you’re around. _I’m_ different. I can actually sleep.” His voice was low and restless, like the wind before a storm. “And I don’t know why.”

“Is that really so awful?” she wondered.

The darkness around them seemed to draw in tight like a closed fist. This darkness was nothing new or strange for two people to whom sleep was a charming intruder, and for whom dreams could only dazzle and terrify at best. To Ben and Rey both, this small darkness before the dawn, this little stretch of time, was not quite a witching hour, but still a space of oddities and all things strange. Like seeing the world naked and not knowing how to punish your eyes for the intrusion.

Another car passed. When Rey saw his eyes again, she shivered. Ben's gaze speared her like the tip of a knife.

“I think I know how you feel,” she said, hammering her words against his silence. She screwed up her eyes, rolled up the sleeves of her will, and dove into the dark of her thoughts, trying to understand herself so Ben could, too.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that her apartment was the first true home she had ever known with any degree of permanence, but it wasn’t the only reason why she was finally starting to sleep with somewhat ease. Despite their tumultuous first meeting, and the strange, inexplicable connection strung up between them like a phantom thread, Rey knew that it was only thanks to Ben that she was getting any regular sleep at all. His presence, like a warm ember glowing in the dark, was somehow comforting, the same way fire could be both kind and cruel, warming and devouring.

“You don’t sound very sure.” Ben’s words were rough and clumsy, but he didn’t sound like he didn’t believe her. No, it was almost like he wanted to take her at her word but didn’t trust that instinct.

“You know you’re not the only person in the world with bad dreams. Some people can’t get comfortable no matter where they are.”

“Even you?”

Rey nodded. “I was put in foster care since I was… since I was eight.” She hastily amended the sentence at the last second. Saying _since I was abandoned_ sounded far too vulnerable, even here in the warm, freeing darkness. “So yes, I do think I know how you feel. I wouldn't say it if it weren't true.”

Ben seemed to hear the unspoken words regardless, almost as if he could sense the painful throb of her heart. And maybe he could. She knew his pain like her favorite passage of a well-loved book. Maybe he knew hers just the same.

“Your parents left you?” he asked, his voice straining against the question.

She nodded once more, tears prickling her eyes. “Either that or they died. I don’t know. I won’t ever know. As if I needed another reason to stay up at night.”

“What do you mean? Tell me.”

Rey rubbed her hands against her eyes, casting aside any lingering traces of sleep as she tried to make sense of her thoughts. What should she tell him? Should she open up about all the years she spent under dozens of unfamiliar ceilings, with a free trial family dozing peacefully in the next room, never knowing their temporary daughter was too scared to get comfortable? Should she let him know how all that restless waiting had damaged her? How it gutted her, stripped her clean, making her a scavenger of her own life, looking for scraps to fuse into something like hope?

Before she could make up her mind about what to say next, Ben slid closer to her in the dark, his fingers groping gently for her hands. When he found them, he ran his thumbs along her skin, stroking her gently from knuckle to fingertip.

“Tell me,” he said again, softer this time. A plea, not a demand.

Rey closed her eyes and confessed everything. Her hopes, her fears, the miserable throb that scratched notches into her heart, over and over again. That she was nothing, worse than nothing—a nobody, a piece of junk. Not a girl but a _thing_ that had never asked for life but was given it and then tossed aside. She laid out her pain like bits of machinery, indestructible devices to take apart, study, and then slowly find a way to make whole again.

“Some nights I don’t feel like I'm anything at all. Empty. Hollow. Unwantable. Unlovable. Just—a _thing._ ” Rey pulled down her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes, her nose. “A ruin or something, I don’t know.”

To Ben’s credit, he was a patient audience, never intruding on her thoughtful pauses or heavy silences. He gathered up both her hands in one of his and cradled them. “Ruins make for poor sanctuaries,” he said, discovering the words as he spoke, testing out their shape and sound.

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Is that supposed to cheer me up?”

“No, I was just thinking out loud. Listening to you gave me an idea.”

“For what?”

“A painting.”

Rey brightened. “So you _are_ an artist.”

“Yes…” he said, warily. “Why do you care?”

“You said something funny when we first met. About how no one noticed you—y’know. Having… trouble sleeping.” She frowned, trying to remember his exact words. “Not your parents, not your friends, not your Master… It was strange, so it stuck with me.”

“You remembered that?” Ben’s voice was hushed, reverent. Rey wished she could see him clearly, instead of just the dim shape of his face in the almost complete darkness.

“Of course I did,” she said. “I remember everything you say to me.” _Even the words you say in dreams._

Silence. And then Rey heard a strange sound. It was clunky and stilted, and it took her a moment to realize that the sound was laughter—Ben was _laughing._ But it sounded wrong, strangled. As if he hadn’t done it in so long that he forgot how.

“I’m keeping you awake,” he said at last, his laughter coming to a short halt. “That wasn’t my plan.”

“Why _are_ you here anyway?" she asked. "I mean, yes, it’s your flat, I get that, but—you have a bed. Why aren’t you in it?”

He paused. The silence between them lingered, lurid and livid and alive. Rey’s face warmed with a strange heat that slipped down her neck, over her ribs, and dripped steadily into her belly.

“I told you. I had trouble sleeping.”

She frowned. “So you came out here to sleep on the floor.”

“Yes.” The word was all teeth, harsh, hard—with a hidden edge of shame.

An idea finally clicked into place. “Ohhh. I get it now.” She withdrew her hands from Ben's grasp and then curled up on her side. “It’s probably for the best that you're here.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Now it’s a proper sleepover.”

Ben let out a low sigh, clearly relieved. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. Rey imagined this was as close to an olive branch as she would get from the man. These words were pioneers, a sign that he, too, could return like for like, kind for kind. “I wouldn’t know what they’re like.”

“Well now you do,” she said promptly, nodding. “And now I’m tired.”

“Don’t let me keep you.”

Silence fell between them like a stone dropped down a dry well. Rey counted from ten inside her head. Then twenty. Then sixty-eight. Even with all this, her forced, gentle breathing and the slow subtraction of numbers, true sleep still eluded her. Her brain refused to relax. Every thought rushed through from one space to the next, demanding and deafening. Every movement in the room received her full, attentive focus, even if it was just the two of them shifting to find a more comfortable position.

And that was how the dawn found Rey, with a mind aflame and thoughts buzzing like hornets swarming a hole in their nest—furious and possessive.

Ben was still asleep. His chest rose and fell in time with Rey’s own movements: the soft tap of her feet on the floor, the gentle sliding steps as she crept around him and over to the windows.

A bright silver light flooded through the glass. Snow. Thick whirls of white ice swirled from the seamless gray sky. Only snow could make a storm so quiet, like death, like sleeping. The colorless, bone-pale snow spilled out across the sleeping Brooklyn street, but if she looked closely, Rey could see dashes of red beneath. Red from paper cups and abandoned scarves and the canvas overhangs of bookstores and barber shops and cafes. All of it red like wounds, like a kiss, like the door in her dreams.

Rey pressed her hand against the window and felt all the warmth from her skin pass into the glass. Slowly, like clearing tears from lover’s face, she swept her hand across the bright, white light, thinking only of the blood red door, of the wounds on Ben’s ribs, of the new scabs on his hand. As the shadow of her touch fell across the glass, the darkness of it bowed into the room. It briefly darkened Ben’s face, and soon his eyes opened in a motion as swift as a flicked light switch. Off. On. Closed. Open.

She felt the change in his breath before she heard it. Rey cocked her head and peered over her shoulder, dark hair swirling against her neck. “Some Spring break,” she mused, pointing at the snow. "Winter just doesn't know when to give up here, does it?"

Ben lumbered to his feet on heavy, sullen steps. He joined her at the window, peering balefully down at the bright blinding white. He was shirtless again, and Rey tried not to stare, knew it was rude to do so when he was nothing to her, not a lover but certainly not a friend but still someone cared for and by. But it was hard _not_ to. And he was so close, close enough to touch or kiss if she wanted, and she did want but didn’t quite have the nerve. There was so much warmth spilling from his scarred and scraped skin, as if the hurting were a scarf woven to keep out other chills.

“If we hurry we can make it to the station before the trains stop running,” he said. “I have a studio in East Hampton. Going there won't make for much of a vacation, but at least it's a change of scenery. If you want.” He turned to her as he spoke, his brown eyes bright like the morning’s first mug of tea.

Rey liked that idea more than she knew what to do with. The thrill of it trickled down her throat like a sliver of ice. She folded her arms not for warmth but to keep her hands to herself. The urge to touch him was mounting high, becoming a mouth hungry with need. “Make me,” she heard herself say, and marveled at her nerve. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing, to be hungry and needy. To have your heart show its teeth from time to time. “Say please.”

“Please.” His mouth shaped the word like a kiss. “I want you to come with me.”

Rey kept her eyes on his lips. His whole face seemed to soften under her gaze, but in no place was this more obvious than his mouth. And for the briefest flash of a moment, she saw white and pink, as he worried his bottom lip with a bite and then smoothed the skin with his tongue.

“Get dressed,” she said. “Pack something warm. We've got a train to catch.”

 

Luck was on their side. The last train left the station at 8:05, before the storm—the fourth Nor’ester of that year—could gather steam, thickening into a blizzard.

They spoke little on the ride out east, slipping into their own private thoughts. They did, at times, clasp hands or stretch out their fingers to rest against the sides and backs of each other’s hands. But apart from this there was nothing else shared, and certainly no words. Whatever had to be said could be saved for the studio.

The studio. As they sped further from Brooklyn and cut through the frozen woods and iced-over towns that peppered Long Island like footprints in the snow, Rey felt her fear stumble behind her on the tracks. Spending time in his apartment was one thing, but actually spending the weekend alone with him, somewhere private?

What was she doing? What was she thinking, running away with him like this? And without even telling her friends. She’d brought her phone with her, and a charger, of course, but she was doing her best to ignore its mad hornet buzzing from the depths of her purse. She didn’t want to read the texts that were steadily piling up like snowdrifts, because to read them would let guilt rush in, and with guilt would come the lies. Rey both wanted to tell her friends the truth and dreaded how they might shape it, turning it into hard questions and cutting glares. _Why would you keep him from us? Why is he your secret?_

Rey couldn’t help but notice that Ben’s own phone stayed silent. At first she envied him this privacy, until she realized it was far more likely to be neglect. He had no one to ignore because there was no one who cared enough to contact him. The thought made her throat seal over, like a torn seam in a dress cinched shut. How long had he been alone? When did it stop being a choice?

“I haven’t been out here in a while,” Ben said, breaking the silence as the train rolled into East Hampton Station.

“Why?”

“Memories. Distractions. Lack of inspiration.” He stepped into the aisle and let Rey pass in front of him. “Take your pick. They're all as honest as the last.”

Their footsteps slid out of sync as they filed off the train into the whirl of white and clumps of ice. “So what’s different now?”

Ben’s fingers trailed down the length of Rey’s arm, warming her through her layers of clothes. He curled his hand around hers and held it so tight she could almost hear their bones groan, like two spoons curled to kiss and meet the twins of their shape. He didn’t answer, but she understood what the silence meant. _You are. And so am I, through you._

After climbing into the back of the last taxi parked outside the station (and paying twice the fare, to silence the driver's grumbles) Ben slid over to give Rey enough room to join him in the backseat. The drive was slow, silent. The radio, through the bursts of static and dead air, plod valiantly through a song she did not recognize, in a language she could not place. It flowed like a circle, rising, falling, matching the insistent beat of synths and the loops of a strummed bass. Hypnotizing, soothing, like a magician casting a spell.

“How can you afford a place out here?” she asked, peering at her reflection in the glass. The Hamptons weren’t known to be affordable, nor had she ever heard of anyone coming here when it wasn’t summer.

“It was a gift,” he said, in that flat voice she was learning to recognize. It meant he was trying very hard to separate what he said from what he felt. “A graduation present.”

Rey’s eyebrows darted up. “Who gives a spare house as a gift?”

“My mother,” he said, and his tone was like a door slamming shut, removing all hope for the topic to continue. "Although I think she got it from _her_ mother, when she died."

The rest of the drive continued in silence, broken only by the little gasp Rey let out as their destination came into view. The "studio" was a tall, thin house with a sloping black roof and small, half moon windows, like a sleeper’s eyes about to slide shut. It was within sight of the beach, just far enough away to be safe from high tide or flooding. Rey stared at the glittering sand and the way the tide froze as it met the shore, hardening into ugly gray glass.

Ben’s hand lingered at her back as they trudged through the snow up to the front door. He fumbled for the keys, cursing under his breath, suddenly all thumbs. Rey watched his breath spiral and break into the air around his mouth, her own breath coming fast from a set of burning lungs. She felt his nervousness sweep across her like needles jabbing at her skin. She didn’t know how to comfort him, much less herself, so she let the silence fill up the awkward, blank space, hoping that comfort would eventually march through it and take charge.

Once the door was open, Ben stomped his way into the dark house. Snow melted in his hair, making the loose black curls relax into wavy clumps. His broad back, once shielded by the hunch of his shoulders, slowly smoothed out, not quite relaxed but trying to be.

Rey kept her eyes on his back as she entered the house and wiped her boots on the mat by the door. Much like his apartment, the studio was sparse, almost Spartan in its design, like a monk’s cell. Black rugs spilled like ink across the floor, blending in with the L-shaped coal dark couch. The dividing line between the living room and the kitchen was as stark as a lightning bolt: all the black gave way to pure bone white, crisp and spotless.

And yet for all that, there was something… _off_ about the house. The indescribable strangeness crept across her back like the wisp of fingertips. She felt watched, judged, carefully and sharply observed, as if the house itself were sizing her up, seeing if she was worthy.

They shed their coats and various layers of warmth—gloves, scarves, hats, boots—like peeling off armor. Bit by bit they fell to the floor.

Ben’s hands closed around Rey’s wrists as he leaned in, his eyes drinking in her flushed face. She’d never before felt so naked while still being fully clothed. His gaze just had that effect on her. An artist’s eyes, hungry, watchful, without a trace of judgment.

Whatever he saw in Rey’s eyes made him smile. The expression slowly bloomed over his mouth, and Rey couldn’t help but stare at it.

“I wouldn’t mind a tour of the place,” she said, because speaking was safer than standing there, staring, wanting to feel his breath and lips and tongue against hers.

The narrow house was two stories tall, with no walls on the second floor. It was all just one giant room, half covered in domino rows of empty canvases and easels, shelves of paints and brushes and palettes, charcoal stubs like rotten fingers left to gather dust. The other side of the room was home to paintings in various stages of completion: some no more than rough sketches, others half finished, the paint dried like congealed blood.

Only one painting was finished: a long tableaux of what looked to be both a monument and a throne room. The background of the canvas was a single, seamless stretch of scarlet, and in the center was a throne of onyx and bone upon which sat a gray, withered figure. The only other color in the painting was on this figure and its hideous, split face: the bluest pair of eyes Rey had ever seen, like chips of ice peering hungrily out of a split, withered face.

Rey’s heart cringed against her ribs. There was something about the painting that both held her attention and _demanded_ it, like a voice commanding her obedience and holding her head in place. It must have something to do with the angle, the forced perspective: it was as if she were looking _up_ at the figure’s distorted face, as if she were kneeling or prostrate against the floor.

She tried three times to tear her eyes away from the canvas and look at something, anything else—the cracks in the ceiling, the paint stains on the floor, Ben’s fingers nervously fluttering into fists and out, open. Eventually, she succeeded.

“Do any of them have a name?” she asked, sweeping her finger back and forth at the wall of paintings.

“Just that one.” Ben pointed to the one of the far right. Rey forced herself not to look at the figure on the throne. “ _What the pupil sees.”_

She could hear the tremor in his voice as he spoke, could _feel_ the effort it took to say the words, to look this painting in the eye and behold not only what he had made, but what had inspired its creation. “It’s… impressive. I’m no artist but I know something good when I see it. And this is definitely something good.” She paused, trying to get the words out just right. "Honestly it's a little terrifying and disgusting but I can't say why, it's just... there. Like it's stuck. And I don't know what to do besides stare it down."

Ben turned to her with that same shy smile as before, the one that set hooks into her heart and pulled it in all directions. “Thank you. That's exactly how I felt when I was painting it.”

Rey didn’t know what came over her. Maybe it was the smile, the feeling of her heart being drawn and quartered; maybe it was the sight of his mouth, those warm, plush lips and his soft, soft voice, reminding her of all the sighs and kisses and hungry, lonely nights that stretched between this moment and any bits of intimacy she’d had before. Maybe it was the narrow house, the strangeness of it, the presence it exuded, as if it had a will of its own that she must flatten into submission, showing her worth and courage. Maybe it was all of these things, or none of them. Maybe it was just the simple fact that she was a woman and he was a man and there was something alive and aching between them, a want that became a need that became a demand for satisfaction.

Whatever it was, Rey closed the distance between them, darted up on the tips of her toes, and carefully slid her hands up the sides of Ben’s neck. He shivered at her touch, but otherwise stayed still, his eyes wide, his lips parted in anticipation of what came next. Rey’s kiss was slow, just an offering, a question posed without words.

Ben didn’t move. His mouth stayed frozen beneath hers.

 _Idiot._ She kicked herself quietly and began to move back. But then Ben leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers. His skin was cold, so cold.

“Wait, just—give me a moment.”

She waited.

He took a long breath in, then let it out. It stumbled from his lungs like a child learning to walk. Then, moving with the sudden rush of a man whose heart was newly undone, Ben wrapped his arms around Rey, crushing her to him. His first kisses were rushed and rusty. Sometimes his teeth got in the way. She didn’t mind that so much. They were obviously long out of practice, but that only meant they had a good excuse to keep trying.

And then his lips were so soft against hers, each new kiss slow, lingering. He passed his fingers down the length of her spine, studying her, tracing every bit of her bones. She arched against his hand, her breasts pushed up flush against his strong, sculpted chest.

Ben moved one of his hands off her back and around her neck, his fingers long enough to curl around her chin. He leaned forwards and kissed the hollow of her throat with a groan.

“I’ve wanted this for weeks now,” she heard herself say. Her voice came from far away, a small, tinny echo at the bottom of a well. “Weeks and weeks.”

His breath fanned out against her neck. His kisses were a glutton’s share, every press of his lips lingering, greedy, exultant. “I couldn’t tell,” he murmured, and it wasn’t until she heard the low rumble of laughter against her jaw did she realize he was telling a joke.

“I wasn’t _that_ obvious.”

Ben curled his fingers around the back of her head, stroking her hair from scalp to tip. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he said, bumping his nose gently against hers. A wolf’s kiss. “I felt it, too.” He shut his dark, deep eyes, and took in a deep breath. “I felt it for years before I met you. Years and years. Lonely, wondering, waiting. For a face without a name. For a mouth with kisses to taste.”

He kissed her again, so sweet that she almost wept to taste it, feeling the ache of it in her teeth. “I knew it was you the moment we met," he continued. "It had to be you. Why else could you hear me, when no one else did?”

Rey moaned in the wake of this confession. Oh how her heart tore itself apart in pieces at such kindness. She kissed him then, kissed him like breathing life into the last ember in the grate. Kissed him the way she’d wanted to do since they first met and she saw the wounds on his chest. Kissed him because she wanted him, wanted and needed and demanded.

And he gave back as good as he got, relieved beyond words that he could finally know how it felt to be taken in by a person with a heart that wanted both to taste and offer itself. “I am yours,” he whispered against her mouth, his tongue tracing the outline of her lips. “Yours. Yours. Yours.” And yet she was the one held so tightly in his arms, a happy prisoner without the shackles. It was her hair laced around his hand, tight enough to sting. It was her body bending against his, yielding to his shape.

His kisses continued to cover her like a man possessed, and he growled against her throat as if he could smell the blood rushing within. Rey ran her nails down the back of his neck hard enough to make him tremble and moan. She opened her eyes, her gaze sliding over to that awful painting. She thought she saw something sharp and blue glittering over his shoulder. Like little flames burning from the depths of the blood red canvas, savoring, knowing, _seeing_.

 _“What the pupil sees_.” Ben had said. But it wasn’t his voice that hissed through her thoughts. This voice was low and thick, as slithery as sin.

 _Don’t look, don’t look, don’t ruin this._ Rey shut her eyes tight and let Ben lift her off her feet. She curled her legs around his waist, but even with all this, and the nails on his neck, and the moans against his throat, and the slow roll of her hips that had him gasping her name like a prayer, there was a sliver of ice in her heart, freezing her where she once burned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what idiot has been setting the wrong publication date for these chapters, thus making them all appear on the 19th (yknow, two days ago??) oops.
> 
> anyway, the kissing chapter! AKA the thing that almost killed me to write because holy shit, physical intimacy is tough to put into words.


	5. You take it all away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey shut her eyes and basked in the warmth of his voice and his kiss. "What's your last name?" she asked.
> 
> He hesitated. "Solo," he said at last.
> 
> "Is that what you use when you paint?"
> 
> "No. For that I'm someone else."
> 
> "Which is...?"
> 
> He fidgeted beneath her. "Kylo Ren," he said, his voice low, almost bashful.
> 
> In a quiet, hopeful corner of her heart, Rey gently pressed his name up against hers. They fit together almost too well. As if stars aligned just to make it so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Very small scene of mild self-injury (finger chewing/picking, to be precise), as well as some very mild Snoke-y creepiness towards the middle/end.
> 
> To avoid the self-injury, stop reading at "panicking" and start up again at "It's fine."
> 
> Also, once again I know this fic is meant to go along to "Abyss" but [this mix of soothing Silent Hill tunes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCDFFRcmcdo&t=4648s) is also super appropriate for this chapter. Liminal spaces, impossible realities, etc. etc.

There was something wrong with Ben’s studio. Something more than just its eerie atmosphere and predator’s patience, something more than the uncanny sensation that the house could, somehow, _watch_ whoever was inside.

At first Rey thought it was just the newness of it, of being in an unfamiliar space that belonged to someone else. She had enough experience with temporary homes to know that there were just some places that would never feel anywhere close to a sanctuary. They would never be anything more a temporary reprieve from the world behind its walls. But this thought, however sensible did little to satisfy her. And the truth of the house danced on the edge of Rey’s tongue, tapping against her teeth like a hammer and chisel, defying words but still taking shape. It didn’t help that her mind was awhirl with other troubling, demanding thoughts, none of which wanted to wait their turn in line.

 _Ben has a family, a_ mother _. Someone who cares about him, someone who gives a damn._ Jealousy churned in Rey’s belly. He had a _family._ So why was he always alone?

Maybe it had something to do with that painting. _What the pupil sees._

Disgust wasn’t a strong enough word to capture just how that painting made Rey feel. There was something fundamentally loathsome about its every inch, but much like the strangeness of the house, she couldn’t say what. Her reaction seethed in a shapeless, formless shadow, buried beneath words, in the cellar of the soul. All she knew was that it was instinctive, primal.

 _Ask him. Make him tell you._ The thought made her close up like a tight fist. Hadn’t Ben already shared enough, just by bringing her here? And didn’t they already know enough about each other’s wounds? They’d only met because the pains of their past took the shape of shared nightmares. What right did she have to demand more than that, until Ben himself was willing to share?

This… thing between them, whatever it was—a bond, a knot, a force that wasn’t yet love but rooted in the same place, tethering two bruised and stubborn hearts—was not like a vein full of bad blood, made for leeching. It was a thing to cherish, to sculpt and shape, and give enough freedom to grow on its own. To command such a thing like a dog trained to heed would be no different than murder—just the kind where nobody died.

 _Fine. Don’t be so dramatic. And don't ask him. Don’t make him tell you._ But Rey’s silence soured her tongue like a ripe lemon. She pored over her bitterness like it was fool’s gold: glittering, bright, but utterly worthless.

 

Despite being snowed in together, and thus forced to coexist in close proximity due to poor insulation, and limited sleeping spaces, Ben and Rey’s newfound intimacy went no further than stolen kisses. Sure, there was that first exchange that ended with her pushed against the wall, calves curved around his waist and ankles crossed at the small of his back, holding herself aloft as she ground against his cock, but that had ended as curt and quick as a throat being cut. First they were all warm lips and hot breath and whispered words, and then—nothing.

Ben had carefully unwound himself from Rey’s embrace, set her on her feet, and held himself at arm’s length. When he spoke, his voice was a flat, heavy thing. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was too much, I wasn’t thinking.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said, a little breathless. Her eyes lowered to his lips, taking careful note at how they trembled at the seams.

“Still. I’m sorry.” He tore his hands through his hair, pulling the strands straight. “I’m sorry. It was wrong.”

And before she could say anything else, he stalked from the room in a set of long, loping strides. They hadn’t mentioned it since, but a wound never stopped hurting just because you chose to ignore it. Ben’s scars were proof enough of that, as were the phantom partners that Rey felt throbbing against her breast, her belly, knuckles and wrist and hips.

Where had he learned to be ashamed of wanting? And who was hurting him, if not himself? And how could he do it without her noticing?

All the words they weren’t saying swelled up between them in the day that followed, as dark as a cancer without the comfort of being insensate. It squatted between them, cackling quietly like a hagraven witch, drawing Rey’s eyes from her phone or off the small notebook she kept in her purse, the one that was half diary, half schedule, half grocery list.

The silence startled Ben too, but he seemed more adept at handling it. His dark eyes would brighten briefly as he looked up from his work and sought out Rey’s face. He studied her in silence, and even smiled if she ever caught him staring. Then, reassured by her own small, Cheshire cat’s grin, all wide white teeth and soft laughter, he would actually _wink_ at her. After that, he would go back to his work with renewed fervor, as if her bliss rekindled something inside him that he struggled to keep lit.

Even so, with these smiles and muted laughter, Rey’s restless heart made itself known. Their silence was an ill-fitting thing, especially after all that tenderness the day before. Hungry words on aching lips, all of them now buried beneath a weight that was made only to suffocate.

When they did speak, it was brief and clinical. Are you hungry feel free to take whatever you want from the kitchen, there’s a grocery store down the road, take my wallet if you need it I don’t mind, I’m fine with what’s here. But these were wasted words, simply meant to kill time and resurrect dead air.

 

On the second day, Ben lapsed into such a long silence that Rey had to grab his shoulder and literally shake him out of it. He shrugged her off and glared at her, before bowing his head as if shame were a hand pressing him flat. "Sorry. I'm busy." He hunched over his sketchbook and smeared an ever-shrinking charcoal stub between his fingers, fingers he would then chew on and pick at until blood bloomed out on his blackened skin.

After a few minutes of this, Rey decided he was best left to himself. She could find some other way to keep herself occupied—like going through the backlog of texts she was still ignoring.

There was less than she'd expected. That was nice.

 

> _—Friday, March 23 rd, 2018—_
> 
> _Rose_  
>  8:45 AM - Heyy jsyk we landed in Orlando safe and sound!! Beat the blizzard but just barely lol  
>  Paige and me should be back by next Fri (she’s gotta get started on Sen Organa’s midterm campaign already smh)  
>  How’s things with you?
> 
> _11:33 AM – Ps who were you talking to on the phone last night? Sounded like a guy~_
> 
> _2:45 PM - ?_
> 
> _3:16 PM – Rey._
> 
> _3:16 PM – Rey, pls._
> 
> _6:13 PM – R E Y_
> 
> _11:36 PM - >:(_

Rey sighed, tabbed out of the message, and then scrolled down to read Finn’s.

 

> —Thursday, March 22, 2018—  
>  _Peanut!_  
>  _11:48 PM – Hope you got home safe! Goodnight, peanut._
> 
> _8:52 AM – Rose and Paige made it out of La Guardia. Don’t think Poe and I will be so lucky :(_
> 
> _9:15 AM – DELAYEDDDDDDDDDDDD_
> 
> _10:03 AM – ? You up?_
> 
> _10:42 AM – Did you lose your charger again?_
> 
> _1:56 PM – Well, all flights are cancelled. Poe and I are heading back home, wanna grab some lunch?_
> 
> _2:45 PM – Buzz buzz buzz~ We’re downstairs, so open up!!_
> 
> _2:47 PM - :|_
> 
> _4:21 PM – Rose is convinced you’ve been kidnapped and/or hooked up with that guy you were on the phone with(?)._
> 
> _8:45 PM – Rey. Are you all right?_

Guilt gnawed at Rey’s heart. She quickly tapped out a message and sent it before she could think twice.

_Finn, I’m fine. Sorry about your flight. I’ve been a little busy. Can't talk yet._

She sent a similar message to Rose, laden with penitent hearts in lieu of an apology.

From Poe, there was just one message. It hurt the worst of them all.

 

> —Saturday, March 24th, 2018—  
>  _Poe DAMMERUNG (dun dun dunnn)_  
>  _Don’t shut yourself off from the people who care about you._

Rey sighed.

"Something the matter?"

Ben's voice was like a knife sliding into the silence. She looked up and found his wary, watchful eyes waiting for her attention.

"No, not really," she said, offering him a smile. It did not reach her eyes. "Just some messages from my friends that are hitting a little too close to home."

He tilted his head. "Do they know about me?" he asked.

"A little."

"Do they have a problem with you being here?"

"No, no, it's not that. They don't exactly know where I am, so they're sort of panicking."

"Ah." Ben laid down what little stub of charcoal was left and scratched his nails against the page, smearing the shapes into loose, smoky spirals.

"What about you?” she couldn’t help but ask. “Do your friends keep tabs on you? Or... maybe your mother?”

“My mother,” Ben said, slipping his thumb into his mouth and peeling off a long, thin strip of skin, “uses her personal assistant to contact me. That hasn't happened for a while. I suspect she's too busy.”

“And your father?" Rey wasn't sure what made her say it. It was a stray thought, really. But the question was out before she could rethink it.

"He's probably dead." Ben squeezed his thumb until the blood ran out, hot and thick.

"Stop it!”

Ben ignored her and went back to shading.

“Shouldn't you wash that off first?" When he didn't respond, she slammed her hand against the floor, dropping her phone with it. "Ben, _look_ at me." He did, and for just a second, solid and clear, she could see the child hiding under his eyes. "You're hurting yourself and you have to stop."

"It's fine," he said in a voice as animated as a wind-up toy. "I'll be fine."

"I don't believe you." Rey pushed herself to her feet and strode out the door, heading for the stairs. "You keep a First Aid kit in here, yeah?" she called over her shoulder.

"Under the bathroom sink," he replied, his low voice following her like a shadow.

She descended the stairs at a rapid pace, all but skipping down the steps. The first floor of the house, with its stark monochrome split of black and white, was even more of a shock to look at now that she'd been in the second-floor studio for so long. There was no color here, no hint of it at all. _Not even a friendly shade of grey._

Rey rounded the stairwell into the narrow hallway that cut the first floor in half, separating the front of the house from the back. Each door she passed was tall and wide, painted immaculately white—except for the one at the end of the hall. She looked it over with a frown. It was the only black door in the whole house. What's more, it was so impossibly narrow that even she couldn't walk through it, not without turning sideways.

At first Rey thought it was just a pantry or a linen closet. Maybe Ben had painted it black in a fit of pique, wanting to offset all the blinding brightness. But the longer she looked, the more her instincts screamed _wrong._ It reminded her of the hallway in her dreams, that endless stretch that could shrink in a heartbeat, an epitome of impossible space.

Her eyes carefully traced the length of the door over and over again. With a little thrill of fear, she realized there were no hinges. No knob. No lock. As she processed this impossible discovery, the narrow, black space around the door seemed to shiver very faintly, like the natural tremor of a breathing creature.

"Ben?" she yelled, her curiosity now rapidly approaching panic. "What's this black door for?"

"What black door?" she heard him call back, his voice muffled.

Rey blinked—and the door was gone. She stared, wide eyed and wild with wonder, reaching out to run her fingers over the wall in front of her. It was empty, nothing more dead, flat space.

She heard Ben's footsteps on the stairs, his heavy, quick tread like a hammer over her head. He called her name more than once, first as a question, then as a plea.

Finally, Rey turned to face him. Ben stood at the end of the narrow hall, backlit by the blinding white sunlight bleeding in through the windows. "What black door?" he asked again. She watched his throat tighten around the words, but there was nothing guarded in his gaze, nothing strained about his expression. He seemed somehow resigned, like a man facing execution.

"It was right here," she said, her hand still touching the blank wall in front of her. “Just a few seconds ago."

Ben said nothing. If he had any doubts, he neither spoke nor showed a trace of them on his face. But Rey's own doubts rushed in to make use of the space, and she shook her head, forced a smile, and shrugged, as if that alone could undo the weight of her own thoughts.

"Must've imagined it," she mumbled, looking at her feet. Before Ben could respond, she darted into the bathroom to find that damned kit. Ben joined her, sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding out his blood-covered hands in penitent silence. She carefully cleaned the cuts, wrapped his fingers in as many bandages as the box had left, and kissed each one of his fingertips.

"You have to stop doing this. I mean it."

"It's a habit. I wouldn't have noticed until you said something about it."

"Then I'll keep saying something until you notice." She held one of his hands in both of hers. His fingers flexed and curled. "All right?"

Ben nodded. "All right."

 

After a hurried dinner of instant rice and sautéed spinach ("A depression meal if I've ever seen one," Rey mused, helping herself to a second bowl), they made a pile on the second floor studio, using coats and scarves and blankets and sheets. At first they lay back to back, elbows clanging and shoulder blades bumping together in graceless attempts at contact. But Rey got tired of the fumbling and soon shifted onto her other side, curling up against Ben's back and letting one of her arms dangle around his hip.

"How's the drawing coming along?" she asked, pressing her lips to the back of his neck. If she angled her head just so, she could avoid looking at that awful painting. _What the pupil sees._ So why did it feel like the painting was the one seeing?

"Fine," he said. The word was oddly wet, strangled. He cleared his throat and tried again. "The sketch is finished, so that's the hardest part done. Now I just have to copy it onto the grid paper. That shouldn't take too long, but I might... I probably won't be very good company tomorrow. And maybe not the day after."

Rey frowned. "Why?"

"It's... I'm not used to being around someone when I'm working. Painting, working. Same thing. It's just me in my head having an argument as I try to figure out what I'm doing and why I bother bothering with it. And that doesn't leave room for me to have a conversation. Not out loud, anyway."

Ben slipped the back of his hand under Rey's fingers. She wove them together, surprised to find that he was wearing gloves. Not the warm woolen kind either, but thick, seamless leather.

"You don't have to keep me entertained," she said. Every word she whispered was another kiss against his neck, warming the small stretch of space where they touched, skin to skin. "The roads should be clear by tomorrow. I could go out for a walk or get started on my own work before I fall behind." There were a few designs for the bakery she wanted to get just right before she sent them off to Holdo, like the Titan Tiramisu topped with sugar-spun Saturn cake pops.

Ben glanced over his shoulder, and then turned until he was lying on his back. Seeing this as an invitation, Rey inched closer, resting her cheek over the space where his heart tapped nervously on the cage of his ribs. "You don't mind?" he asked.

"Why would I mind?"

"I don't know," he said at once, defensive. No, that wasn’t it. He was _scared_. "It seems like something most people would mind."

"I am not most people." Rey smiled and pressed a quick kiss to his chest. His heart stumbled and then picked up again, gaining momentum. "In fact I'm just a person. Singular."

"A person," he repeated, sliding one arm under and then around her back until his hand lined up with the arc of her ribs. "A girl. A distraction, a surprise. A welcome trespasser." He laid out the words as if they were shoes to try on and soon walk in. "Just a girl," he said at last, settling on the first choice. "A Rey." He paused. "What's your last name?"

"Doe," she said. "Like the deer, not the lumps you use in baking."

"I thought they only used that for unidentified bodies."

 _Cheery._ "They give placeholder names to abandoned children, too," she whispered, her voice curling up inside her throat like a child hiding from the darkness outside her bed. "Roe or Doe, Bloggs or Smith. I went with the one I liked best. Back then I was on a bit of a _Bambi_ kick; one of the counselors had a whole stack of Disney tapes that she'd let me watch while she went over my case. So... Doe it was."

Ben pulled Rey closer until she was pressed so tight against his body that she was half on top of him. She slid her leg in between his and got comfortable in the new position. "If I could choose now, I'd probably go with Smith, though. Simpler."

"Rey Doe," he said, his lips pressed to the crown of her head. "I like it. It suits your eyes."

“Sort of a strange compliment, but I’ll take it.” Rey shut her eyes and basked in the warmth of his voice and his kiss. "What's your last name?" she asked.  
  
He hesitated. "Solo," he said at last.  
  
"Is that what you use when you paint?"  
  
"No. For that I'm someone else."  
  
"Which is...?"  
  
He fidgeted beneath her. "Kylo Ren," he said, his voice low, almost bashful.  
  
In a quiet, hopeful corner of her heart, Rey gently pressed his name up against hers. They fit together almost too well. As if stars aligned just to make it so.

A few minutes passed. then, "Rey?" he whispered.

"Hmm?"

"About that black door... the one you mentioned earlier? I've seen it, too."

Rey’s eyes snapped open. She stared into the dark corners of the studio. The shadows seemed to inch closer, as if they were listening. "You have?"

"Yes. It's been here as long as the house has been standing." He paused, searching for the words. "Whatever you do, don't open it."

"It didn't look like it _could_ open."

"Well it can. But don't do it. Promise me you won't." His hand turned over until he was squeezing his fingers against hers, making her bones creak. "Promise me."

"That hurts," she protested. He didn't let go, but he did loosen his grip just enough to allow her to flex her fingers. "Why? What’s inside?"

"Just promise me, Rey. Please. Don't even look at it if you can avoid it. And I know that won't be easy—it... likes to be looked at. It craves attention."

Something in the darkness hissed. "How's that possible?" she asked.

"How is any horrible thing possible?" he replied, his tone bitter. "Because somewhere in the world, there's something wonderful happening that needs a counterweight. That’s how it works. Miracles ask for a sacrifice, but no one likes to remember that. Lambs blood, firstborn sons." She heard his throat clench. "Only sons. They just want to think it’s kindness, a blessing—but magic of any kind has a price.” He took a breath. “Powerful light, powerful darkness. Something like that."

Rey thought back to the first time she'd ever heard him scream. The power of it, the pain, the raw, aching need. She thought of the warmth of his kisses, the soft way he handled her, restraining his obvious desire for something more. Suddenly, it all seemed to fit.

Is that what they were, a balance meant to outweigh whatever shadows had settled into their lives, like soldiers invading and staking out their claim? "Sounds like you've given this a lot of thought.”

"I've had to," he insisted. "Not that it did me any good. That's how I noticed the door in the first place. I was thinking about it, then trying not to think about it, and then it… stuck. And it's never gone away. And it doesn't even stay in one place; it moves." Every word was a ghost that crawled from the open grave of his mouth. "Sometimes I think it follows me. I don't know how. I don't know why. It just does. And I didn't know it'd still be here, otherwise I wouldn't have brought you along at all, I'm sorry, I am. I wasn't thinking."

Rey placed her knee against his hip and curled up on his chest. Heart to heart, rib to ribs. They matched. Exhaustion flooded through her, reminding her how tired she was, how she was putting off the inevitable. But Ben hardly seemed close to sleep at all. His hands slid over her back, into her hair, then down the length her thighs. Tracing her, sketching her, defining her shape to push back the shadows of his thoughts.

She shut her eyes again and forced the next words out. "I won't go near it, okay? I promise."

Ben sank his fingers into her hair and pulled. She tilted her head back, offering her mouth, her chin, her throat. He kissed all three, his heart-shaped mouth trembling against her skin. "And whatever you do," he said, stroking her hair, "don't listen when he calls for you."

"Who?" Rey wanted to ask, but the word never left her mouth. Sleep fell on her like a blow to the head, a hammer slamming an errant nail down in its place.

 

A familiar dream was waiting for her. She was back in that once endless hallway. But she was used to it now.

She turned to face the red door. It was almost purely white now. Maybe she'd wipe it clean tonight.

But the door was no longer red at all. It was completely black, like a burn scorching the wall.

Rey felt a scream slip into the hinges of her jaw. She bared her teeth and snarled, slamming her hand against the door.

Someone laughed on the other side. A man’s voice, unfamiliar, dark and churning. “Such spark! Such fire! Oh, I _like_ you.”

Rey clawed at the door until her fingers bled. “Hang what you like,” she said, spitting on the floor. It burned through like acid. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care. Stay out of my head and stay the hell away from Ben.”

“Easier to ask for blood to leave the vein, my dear,” the voice crooned. “ _Abyssus abyssum invocat._ ”*

Rey's heart hammered against her chest. Blood slid down her fingers and crashed to the floor, where it hardened like wax. “Get out of my head—and get out of his house.” Words were just breath, and the will was just a way for the heart to make a fist, but if you added in bared teeth and hooked hands and blood spilled, then suddenly—ah, it was magic. And magic of any kind had a price.

“Come inside, my dear, and say that to my face.”

The black door swelled up, fat with a glutton's pride. Rey’s own pride bristled against this new bruise, and she lowered her hand to where the handle might be. The door opened to her touch, and she walked into the waiting darkness, her head held high and her heart raised like a banner. _I am vengeance,_ it cried. _I am justice, built for war._

 

As Rey dreamt, Ben kept up a steady press of kisses and soft, wordless whispers, smoothing his thumb over her brow and mouth when she frowned. He rubbed circles against her shoulders when she hunched up, trying to take shelter in her bones.

Ben didn’t sleep a wink that night. He kept watch over Rey in the darkness, her sentinel, her guardian. He only shut his eyes when the shadows inched closer, whispering words only he could ever hear. _You've let her come too close, now she's in too deep in you. You've always been helpless, but now you're in her power and you'll spend every day regretting it. As sure as a bullet. It'll kill you to live with her, without her._

Ben scraped his teeth over his lip until he tasted blood and shame, and wept silent tears into Rey's dark hair.

 

Sunday dawned dim and dull. A gray day, instead of the pure, blinding white born from the snow.

Ben was gone by the time Rey woke up. By then, half the day had disappeared. She stared in horror at her phone. _3:45 PM._ She hadn’t slept this late since the summer.

She found the note Ben left on the kitchen counter, along with some cash—enough for cab fare and a train ticket—and a small charcoal sketch. It was a portrait of her in profile. The words, _The girl I’ve heard so much about_ were written in a gentle, sloping script on the bottom of the page.

She read the note next.

 

> _Rey—_
> 
> _Out for a run. Well, a walk. There’s ice and I’ll probably slip. I'm old enough where that's a problem now._

She raised an eyebrow. "And just how old is that?" she wondered, but he answered it in the next line.

> _I'm thirty, by the way. I'm ~~really~~ hoping that's not a problem._ _  
> _Unrelated: I’ll be gone a while. Don’t wait up._  
>  _I’ll see you back home. Thanks for the company.__

And then, so small that she almost missed it, she saw a row of four x’s and o’s. They crowned Ben’s name like a garland.

 

Rey held the note and the portrait both in her hands, looking at them in the back of the cab, and then once again on the train back to Brooklyn. She wanted to smile at these gifts, and she knew that she should be touched by these obvious tokens of affection, but she felt… strange. Out of herself. A trespasser in her own thoughts and bones.

She buried her yawn in her hand and gave her wrist a hard, twisting pinch. It didn't help wake her up. She'd overslept and now she was paying for it. She leaned against the window. The glass was a cool kiss on her temples, little warmer than ice.

A few seats away, a child began to cry. Rey opened her eyes.

There was a long black door burned into the wall across from her, and a pair of pale blue eyes gleaming from within. Rey stared into the darkness, no longer afraid. _If this is the price of loving Ben, then I’ll take it,_ her heart said. And her mind, for once, raised no complaint. _I can be brave for the both of us,_ she thought, as fierce as a wolf's wedding vow. And she swore by those words, wove them through her heart until they warmed her like blood, no matter who nor what darkness followed her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Latin for "Hell calls hell; one misstep leads to another." Any botched grammar is purely my own fault, I obviously did not study Latin and tried to cross-reference this as much as I could to get it right.
> 
> "krist, just write short and sweet chapters," i say.  
> "oh you thought this was gonna be easy? here's a 4k chapter, now shut up."
> 
> so, yeah. sorry? about that?? we're movin' steadily along into the fic's second act here, and depending on how much i overwrite i may have to raise the chapters up from 13 to, idk. something else. not sure yet. we'll see when we get there!
> 
> thanks for reading!
> 
> ps - i tried to do this qt thing with emojis but BOY did that fuck up the formatting. :| it would've made the text message section ten times cuter.


	6. Nothing will keep us apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By the third week of April, Rey had run out all other questions—except for the one she was most afraid to ask.
> 
> She'd just gotten in from another long shift at The Mad Batter when she found Ben in her kitchen washing dishes. He turned to her with a smile, brightening up at the sight of her. "Welcome home," he said.
> 
> Rey stared at him, at his warm eyes and soft lips, at the way his hair was clipped back off his face with one of her ridiculous purple glitter barrettes. She opened her mouth, thinking to greet him, but what came out instead was—“Are we dating?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> psst--it's the smut chapter.
> 
> you're welcome.

Rey didn’t see Ben for a whole week. He returned to their apartment on the Sunday before her classes started.

Though Ben was clearly half dead on his feet, with dried paint in his hair and long white streaks of primer and plaster staining the whole length of his right sleeve, he'd knocked on her door instead of going straight home. In between half-conscious mutterings of gratitude and confused conjectures about where the black door had disappeared to, Ben gave her a kiss hello and then another kiss goodnight, promising to see her againin the morning.

“Can't,” she'd told him, holding him close. “Classes start again tomorrow.”

He groaned against her lips. “After, then. I'll be here.” His eyes charted a quick path around her face, relearning her features. "Nothing will keep us apart," he said, as solemn and sure as an oath made in blood.

As they lapsed into another pass of long, lingering kisses, Rey made sure to keep her eyes open. She stared at the hallway wall over Ben's shoulder, watchful, attentive. Nothing seemed out of place. No sinister shadows, no hissing darkness, no cold, cunning eyes that seemed to laugh without a sound.

Rey's fear unclenched like fingers unraveling from a fist. _Good._ She watched Ben leave with something like hope in her heart, replaying his mumbling in her head.

_"The door’s gone and I don’t know where it went but I’m hoping like hell it’s fucked off for good."_

 

Rey knew the truth—that the door wasn't really gone, that it had somehow followed her home, and was now taunting her with sudden appearances in the apartment, or in the break room at work. Even her university wasn't safe from this impossibly black door, gouged into the world like a wound made only to rot and fester. She also didn't know how she would go about breaking this news to Ben, or if he would even think to ask. Perhaps, at long last, the creature that lurked in the shadows of Ben’s life would give up haunting him. And even if it had set its sights on her next, that was a risk she was more than willing to take. There was nothing that this terror—eldritch and unknowable and unrestrained as it was—could do to her that she wouldn't be ready to face. There was no hurt nor harm nor hideous plot that she wouldn't meet head on, eyes forward and teeth bared.

She was Rey Doe, a girl of no name but the one she'd chosen so long ago. She was Rey of no name, veteran to all her worst fears before she was even twenty years old. She had nothing left to fear now.

Let the darkness and the unknown that crept within it do its worst—as long as it did it to her _first_.

 

Thankfully, her life wasn't all grim darkness and melodramatic vows. She was also a young woman of simple needs. All she wanted a good night's sleep, a steady paycheck, and for her maybe-boyfriend-but-probably-more-like-a-lover Ben Solo AKA Kylo Ren AKA Big Soft Cuddle Machine to be happy. And not necessarily in that order.

 _Make that four things_ , she amended, grimly putting away her notes. _Pass with a 3.5 GPA, minimum._

All four of Rey's current goals, and her determination to accomplish them as the semester rapidly drew to a close, wouldn't be so difficult if she didn't also accidentally sabotage herself. When she wasn't spending time with Ben or picking up shifts at The Mad Batter, most of her free time was spent Googling her boyfriend's art career.

And really, how could she _not_? Ben was an _artist_ —he’d had nation-wide museum exhibits dedicated to his work for crying out loud _._ It was all new and silly and strangely thrilling—at least, that's what she told herself whenever she scrolled though search results, bookmarking the few articles that looked the most promising. Some were barely worth her time, little more than the dregs of gossip the likes of which only TMZ or Star would bother putting to print. But the fact that Ben— _Kylo_ —had meant something enough at some point for both the New York Times and a rag mag to write about was bizarrely fascinating. Even if the articles ranged from a small blurb in _10 Art Exhibits to View This Weekend_ to a sprawling full-page _Capo Kid Exposed! “Friend” of Estranged Crime Lord Solo’s Son Tells All!_

“Well that one’s _clearly_ bullshit,” Rey said to her phone, and quickly tabbed out of it.

And yet even with all this on the side research, Rey still felt as if much of Ben’s life still remained unclear. It was the little details she tripped over, curiosities so small that she wondered how they’d gone this long without ever being mentioned before. Like where was he born? Did he have any siblings? Where were the rest of his friends—or any of them?

What were his parents like? Why didn’t he talk to them anymore?

Was his father _really_ in deep with the mob, as the articles claimed? Is that why Ben had said his father was “probably dead”?

… When, if ever, did he first fall in love?

The last question often stopped Rey short. She didn’t quite trust herself to ask it, not because of what Ben might say, but because of how much she might confess in response.

But a secret is a hard thing to keep. It lives to be known and shared. And so all the loving, lurid, heartfelt words Rey kept from Ben would spill out when she least expected it. Her little notebook, the one she kept in her purse, soon turned into a full-on diary, its pages home to stream of conscious confessions born of pure devotion.

_He’s like a storm made to take the shape of a man, but when he touches me his fingers ghost over my skin so softly, like I’m made of glass. And oh, I know it’s not healthy to think only one man can be so holy, but with every pass of his hand down my back, around my waist, or up my neck, I feel whole and light for the first time, like a thing dearly beloved and divine._

With every word she wrote never said, Rey’s hand would clench like a stone held between two shaking fingers, rubbed thin with worry. _And I know this isn’t just lust, it’s trust, pure faith in the way our bodies can fuse together and fix each other in the broken places. His fingers mend the jagged cracks and gaps that hide in the heart of me, all the broken bits turned into gouges by time and grief. He can and does and will cross the divide between the hurt in my heart and mess of my mind, and as I hold his face in my hands, thumb away his tears, I will whisper his name into a prayer so he sees himself as I do, as something to believe in._

With every word she wrote, wrote and wanted dearly to say, Rey’s jaw would clench like a lever-action rifle, the kind best used for hunting. Each word was a bullet shot through the heart of her silence, her aim straight and true. One shot, one kill, one truth.  _Nothing will keep us apart._

 

Rey tried her best to avoid reading any biographical information on Ben during her online exploits. Those sorts of things were best heard directly from the source. Luckily, he was often just a few steps away these days, and more than happy to take part an impromptu question-answer session.

“Where did you go to school?” she asked him one day, after he found out she went to Hunter.

“SVA first, then the Academy of Arts for my MFA.”

Rey hopped up on her kitchen counter and looped her arms around his neck. She gave Ben her biggest grin and a slowest kiss. “You actually got a Master’s for _painting_?” she drawled, her mouth still pressed against his.

“It was for Fine Arts,” he said, pulling back just enough to break the kiss. “And of course I did. I’m good at art. I liked doing it, and I wanted to get better at it.” Ben chewed on his lip, peeling off a small strip of skin. “What’s wrong with that?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. What did your parents think about it?”

“I don’t know,” he said, gently stepping out of Rey’s loose embrace. “I never asked them. Didn’t seem like any of their business.” He wouldn’t look at her, a deliberate evasion that only made her even more curious. “I was planning for _my_ future, not theirs.”

Rey watched as Ben crossed the room, moving well out of range for any further hugs or kisses. That was when she noticed the changes he made to her apartment. All her furniture had been deftly pushed to the side to make room for a smaller art studio. A long black sheet was spread out on her living room floor, weighed down at the corners by a pair of boots, a book on digital logical design, and her micro Acer laptop. Dollops of paint already pockmarked the sheet, which was thankfully thick enough not to let any of the stains seep through to the floor underneath.

“You’re painting in here?” she asked, oddly touched.

Ben raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “I like it when you’re near me,” he said, stooping to pick up his palette and a fresh brush.

Rey lowered herself to the floor and marched over to him. She slid her arms around his chest, pressing her cheek to his broad, firm back. “I like it, too,” she said.

Ben shifted his palette to the same hand that held the brush. It was a precarious balance, but his movements were slow, almost indulgent. He closed his long fingers over one of Rey’s hands, one after the other, and held on tight.

* * *

 

In the days that passed, Rey watched Ben slowly succumbed to the quiet rush and isolating haze of his newfound creativity. He fell into painting like a trance, sometimes going for hours before he stopped, looked around, and took notice of the time that passed. She would often catch him muttering under his breath, scowling at a mistake or arguing with low, quiet heat about an image in his mind that was stubbornly refusing to take shape.

It wasn’t exactly her idea of domestic bliss, but she liked having him nearby just as much as he clearly liked being there—although that closeness never seemed to go any further than hushed whispers, clasped hands, and increasingly tempting kisses. Ben was either too distracted or too polite to outright pursue sex, and considering that he would dutifully look away if he ever caught Rey in a towel, darting from the shower to her bathroom, she strongly suspected it was the latter.

Not that Rey minded _._ Not exactly. But the warmth and tension and fire and unspoken love that bloomed between them was already long past a slow, smoldering burn, and she didn’t want to be the only one to do something about it.

In all fairness, Ben truly did seem too distracted to care much about his sex drive. He would fall asleep either in her bed or on her couch, stay as still as a stone, and wake up at the first pale gray break of dawn to start all over again. He ate only when Rey put food in front of him, a habit that frightened her as badly as his scabs and bruises and scars, a collection of wounds that, she noted thankfully, were no longer increasing. His body was healing, bit by bit, and he was relearning new habits to replace the hurtful ones.

And through it all, the questions continued.

“When’s your birthday?”

“November 27th.” He paused. “1987.”

“18th of August,” she supplied before he could ask. “1997.”

Ben made a face. “I _remember_ 1997,” he grumbled. “So many good albums came out that year.”

“Name five.”

“I can name ten.” Ben held out his hand and curled his fingers inward one at a time as he counted. “Third Eye Blind. Coal Chamber. Jurassic Five. Daft Punk’s _Homework_. Boysetsfire’s _The Day the Sun Went Out_.” He held up his other hand and did the same. “Savage Garden. Jack Off Jill’s _Sexless Demon’s and Scars_ —”

Rey spluttered as she laughed. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

Ben grinned. “Let me finish! Saliva. Sevendust. And Shai Hulud’s _Hearts Once Nourished with Hope and Compassion_. There—all ten.”

“I literally have not heard of any of those bands.”

“How could you?” he shrugged, unconcerned. “You were a newborn.”

“Quiet, you.” She would just have to take his word that these bands were memorable, and maybe look them up later. He was always listening to the songs she liked; it seemed only fair to do the same.

 

As it turned out, Rey did not like his taste in music.

“That’s fine,” he said. “Just as long as we can keep listening to The Smiths without any problems.”

“Naturally.”

 

And the questions continued.

“Who would you say are your biggest artistic inspirations?”

“Bosch. Bacon. Blake.”

“That’s a lot of Bs,” she pointed out.

“Klimt,” Ben added, with a face and tone so serious that Rey couldn’t help but laugh. “And Mary Blair.”

“Another B,” she said. “Never heard of that one, though.”

“I thought you were a Disney fan. Go rewatch _Alice in Wonderland,_ or _Cinderella._ Her color and style were the beating heart of those films.”

“I can’t picture you sitting down to watch Disney princess movies.”

Ben smiled—he was doing that more often these days, ever since their together weekend at his studio. “I liked the colors,” he said by way of explanation.

Rey decided to leave it at that, enjoying the sight of his warm, boyish smile too much to dig deeper into its cause.

 

By the third week of April, Rey had run out all other questions—except for the one she was most afraid to ask.  
  
She'd just gotten in from another long shift at The Mad Batter when she found Ben in her kitchen washing dishes. He turned to her with a smile, brightening up at the sight of her. "Welcome home," he said.  
  
Rey stared at him, at his warm eyes and soft lips, at the way his hair was clipped back off his face with one of her ridiculous purple glitter barrettes. She opened her mouth, thinking to greet him, but what came out instead was—“Are we dating?”

Ben considered his answer carefully, searching her face with that intense, artist’s gaze. Finally, he licked his thumb and ran it across a smudge on her cheek. “How did you get powdered sugar on your face?” he asked.

Rey blushed. “You’re avoiding the question,” she said. "And maybe I put it there on purpose.”

“Doubtful.”

Her heart slammed against her chest like a battering ram. “Maybe I just wanted an excuse for you to lick me.”

Ben’s eyes flashed. “Also doubtful,” he said, his voice low. “You could’ve just asked.”

“Answer my first question.” She stared up at him, dimly aware of how the room had suddenly gotten far too warm for comfort. “Are we dating?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, trying not to laugh. And then, before Rey could do more than glare, Ben leaned down until his forehead bumped gently against hers. “I’m already yours,” he whispered, giving her bottom lip a quick kiss. “I told you I was. Don’t you remember?”

“I did—I do. It’s just…” Rey lowered her eyes and wove her fingers together in a nervous cat’s cradle.

“It’s what?”

“Well it was never made… you know. Official.”

He frowned. “Do you want me to take an ad out in the paper?”

“Don’t joke, this is serious.”

“I’m taking it seriously— _seriously_.” Ben turned away and took his time drying his hands. She watched with mounting impatience for him to rejoin the conversation. “You’re the one who hasn’t said anything on… that subject,” he added at last.

“What? Yes I have.” But even as she said it, Rey couldn’t help but backtrack. _Had_ she? It was getting harder to parse what she’d thought about Ben from what she’d said to him. They were spending so much time together, and they were otherwise so in sync with each other’s moods and thoughts, even their _dreams_ , that she just naturally assumed he would know exactly how she felt about him.

And them.

_Us. Together._

“You haven’t,” he countered, his voice quiet. He turned to face her, his expression guarded, like a mask. “I would have remembered.”

Rey shrugged out of her coat and dropped it, along with her keys and purse, on the countertop. She watched his eyes dart up and down as he took in the sight of her uniform. His eyes froze on her hip, where the name of the bakery was stitched into the apron. "You work with Aunt Ami?" he said.

"Don't distract me." Before she could lose her nerve, Rey darted up on her toes and took hold of Ben’s face between her hands. “I love you, Ben Solo,” she said, every word like a kiss. “I love you and I’ve been loving you and I think it’s about time we did something about that.”

His throat tensed and shifted. “Like what?”

She took a breath. “Sleep with me.”

There was an unspoken space left after that sentence—a sentence that seemed far too small to convey just how much Rey was asking. _Sleep with me, love me, touch me, trust me, trust me, take me,_  have  _me._

“We have been. For weeks now.” Ben's smile was a trembling thing. “Sleeping has been the entire basis of our relationship up to this point.”

He was going to make her say it, wasn’t he? She knew that glint in his eye. And she could damn well see the smirk he was trying to hide. These things did not infuriate her as much as she thought. This wasn’t teasing, no. It was tentative, timid, a bruised tenderness, no different from stretching out a hand to take the one already offered.

Rey carefully ran her thumbnail along the beauty mark on his left cheek, the one that sank into the crease of next to his lips. “Ben Solo, you big beautiful bastard, I think it’s about time you fucked me.”

“Oh. Is that all?” His eyes were flat, his voice oddly wooden. But Rey knew him better than that. She saw the way his mouth tensed, and how he caught the edge of it in his teeth. She also saw the breath he took in, and the way he licked his lips, his eyes darting down and around her mouth, as if her words still lingered there.

“You don’t want to?” she asked.

“I want to, I do,” he said at once. “It’s just—it’s… it’s been a while. For me.”

That was a relief. “That’s not a problem,” she said, curling her hands around the back of his head, sinking her fingers into his dark wavy hair. “How long?”

He cleared his throat. “Well… more like never.”

Rey stared at him. Then, finally, the words connected in her brain. She grinned. “You’re a _virgin_.”

“Surprise,” he said in a toneless cheer. He even raised his hands in mock celebration. “And I take it that you’re… not.”

“Oh, no, I got that out of the way a few years ago,” she said. She repositioned her hands to squeeze his shoulders, undoing the tension woven through him, before sliding her fingers down his arms until she met his hands. “Does that bother you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good. The first time it happened, it wasn’t anything special.” Rey squeezed his hands tight enough so he could feel the tremors in her fingers. “But it’ll be different with us. With you.”

A long moment passed in silence, long enough for it to turn from tense to something softer, almost painfully tender. And then, at last, Ben took a breath and nodded.

“Okay,” he whispered.

“Okay.”

Had it always taken this long to walk from the living room into her bedroom? Rey could have sworn that her flat tripled in size as she turned and led the way, each step a sharp, resounding tap that beat out of time with her heart. And why _was_ she so nervous? She’d quite literally—and happily— _asked_ for this.

 _Relax. Get a grip._ Rey flicked the lights on as she passed the switch. She took a breath. Held it in, counted back from ten. _Just imagine how Ben feels_ —and just like that, she relaxed. All the jangling tangles and shambles of her nerves vanished, leaving her with the steady pulse of her heart and the thrumming thread of desire they both shared.

Relieved by this new burst of courage, Rey turned to face him, taking a few steps until the back of her legs brushed against the bed. She smiled, waited for him to smile back, and then began to unthread the buttons on her absurd uniform.

“Shouldn’t—shouldn’t I do that?” he asked, watching her fingers.

Rey pressed her lips into a thin line, transforming what would have been laughter into a thoughtful hum instead. “You can take off the rest,” she said, having reached the last button. She slipped out of her dress and tossed it aside, rolling her shoulders so that she stood up proper and straight.

Ben’s expression was a curious thing. He looked at her with a mixture of awe and intensity, so much so that it was almost alarming. Hungry wasn’t the word for it, no, it wasn’t even close. His was the sort of look that left her feeling shear, clear and bright, like crystal, like light, until she was barely aware that there was space and clothes and a divide of experience and the lack thereof dividing them.

As if the same thought crossed his mind, Ben stepped forward in two long strides, closing what little space remained. He cupped her face in his hands, and she tilted her head back to meet his mouth, pressing all her warmth and comfort and tenderness into every kiss.

“Before—before we take this any further,” he said, his voice oddly strained, “I just have one favor to ask.”

Rey’s heart twisted as she watched him close his eyes. She knew that trick: shutting your eyes so you could hide in the darkness behind them, even just for a few seconds. “Name it and I’ll do it,” she said.

“It’s a color system. Sort of like safe words but not—you know. That intense.” His words spilled out in a rush.

“Tell me,” she said, turning her head from side to side to kiss his hands.

“Green’s obvious—it means keep going. Or start. And yellow is… yellow means slow down, or ease up….” His voice trailed off.

“And red means stop,” she finished, seeing where the rest of that sentence was headed. When he opened his eyes again, she saw only gratitude in his gaze. “That’s no problem at all, love. I can do that.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

“Look, if you’re not sure—”

“I am. Really.” Ben sealed the words with a kiss. “I want this. I want _you._ ” He gathered up her hands and pressed them against his chest.

Rey flattened her palms over his heart. “Green?”

“Green,” he breathed.

And with that crooked smile she knew he loved, Rey pulled him onto the bed with her. As she quickly shimmied out of her leggings and then reached out to undo the button and clasp of Ben’s pants, he ran his fingertips down the little twisted black straps of her bra, smoothing them until they were straight. She reached behind her to undo the clasp, surprised to feel one of Ben’s hands skim up her back to offer her some assistance. It came off quicker than she expected.

Some trace of her astonishment must have shown on her face. Ben tutted softly, shaking his head. “I’m not _completely_ hopeless, you know,” he said. He pulled off his pants and kicked them into the darkness. With a smile that made her breath catch, he leaned forward to clamp his hands around her waist as he settled down to kneel on the bed.

Rey straddled the tops of his thighs, curling one hand around his neck. “I never doubted you for a minute,” she murmured, but her words soon closed off into a short, sharp gasp as Ben’s mouth closed over her left breast. Her nipples stiffened under his warm, wet lips. Her gasp gave way to a moan as he added in the soft glide of his teeth over her sensitive skin.

Murmuring quiet words of encouragement, Rey slid her hands down his chest, tracing the familiar scars and bruises that seemed, somehow, impossibly, to shrink from her touch. All the old wounds he wore buried themselves further beneath his skin, as if they burned in shame, knowing themselves to be nothing more than unwanted intruders.

Ben let out a groan as Rey’s fingers dipped lower, skimming over his abdomen and down to the hard length of his erection. A hot rush of air burst across her chest as she reached into his boxer-briefs and curled her fingers around his cock. She gave it an experimental stroke, coaxing him to let out a gravelly moan laced through with desire.

“Still green?” she whispered, sliding her thumb around the blunt red tip.

He moaned and leaned forward, pressing his chest flush against hers and forcing her back until Rey was flat on the bed. She smiled as he ran his fingertips across the band of her panties, stopping briefly to laugh and flick the little pink bow that was sewn into the front. “Cute,” he said.

She responded by giving his cock another stroke. Served him right.

The rest of their clothing came off rather fast after that, to the surprise of neither. They studied each other’s newly bared skin in hushed silence.

A hook caught in Rey’s heart and twisted. There were scars all down Ben’s hips and thighs. Long, jagged lines, a lattice-work of pain far too symmetrical to be a mistake. She blinked, forcing back the tears that burned her eyes. Now was _not_ the time to cry—not now, of all bloody times.

Ben noticed her tears all the same. “I did all that long before I met you.” He paused, his teeth worrying his lip. “We could turn the light off if—”

Rey darted up to give him a kiss, pouring all her heart into it. She felt him smile against her lips.

Ben's hands slowly bent around her back, guiding her down to the bed with him now fully on top.  By that point, his erection was a solidly insistent presence between them. It stoked the warmth pooling low in her belly, and she lifted her hips, desperate to relieve some of that tension through friction.

He hissed through his teeth, slipping one hand out from under Rey’s back to steady himself on the bed. Ben curled his fingers around the bed sheet, twisting it into his fist, while the other hand skimmed over her stomach. Rey raised her hips again, letting her legs fall open just a little wider so that he could sink in between them, but instead he simply ran one fingertip down the length of her, into the heat between her legs.

 _Oh._ Rey moaned at his touch, which only encouraged him to do it again, slower, more than happy to take his time. And then add another finger to the process.

“Tease,” she huffed, crossing her ankles behind his back.

Ben’s laughter was breathless, and soon so was Rey as he slipped his fingers further inside her. He curled them back and forth, steadily gaining momentum until she lost all sense of herself.

 _Fuck,_ his fingers were long. She’d known that already, of course, and she’d always quietly marveled at the strength of his hands, and the careful control he exerted each time they touched, but this was something new entirely. That strength, that power, was now unrestrained and utterly focused onto this one task.

Heat raced down her legs. Rey arched off the bed, trying to ease some of the pressure that he was both responsible for and relieving. But Ben had her almost literally in the palm of his hand. His fingers slipped in deeper, each stroke becoming longer, faster, allowing her just enough time to adjust before he once again picked up speed. She moaned, wanting to thank him, praise him, demand that he keep going, but the words soon lost their shape. Only Ben’s name emerged whole and clear from her breathless praise and pleas.

When she felt his thumb glide up her clit, rubbing that little bundle of aching, needful nerves in time with his strokes, she knew it wouldn’t be long before she came. The whole world, the whole scope of Rey’s thoughts, were limited to the steady rhythm of his fingers, his quiet hums of appreciation, and the thundering of her own heart. It seemed to swell up against her ribs, threatening to crack the bone and beat right out of her chest.

Her mouth dropped open, head falling back as she gasped once, twice. Her climax was a quiet explosion, ripples of pure pleasure and almost painfully intense tremors that went beyond the scope of breath or words. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Ben watching her with a wide, hungry gaze, as if stamping every moment of this onto his memory. His fingers slowed, letting her ride out the rest of her orgasm, before he pulled them out completely.

Rey watched as Ben brought his fingers up to his lips, sucking the traces of her desire off the tips.

She moaned—no, it was a _mewl,_ a breathless, helpless sound, that soon gave way to something like a growl. Even though her limbs felt soft and sluggish, Rey still had enough strength to push herself up and flatten against his chest. Their lips crashed into a kiss, and she pushed forward with enough determination, wild and hungry and _needing_ to be close to him again, that Ben had to hold her steady. He curled his arms around her waist, letting his fingers rest at the small of her back.

“You ready?” Rey whispered against his mouth, lowering herself down until the tip of his cock brushed against her.

Ben's mouth closed over the side of her throat, just over the place where her pulse thumped the hardest. “Yes,” he breathed, and for the first time he sounded as weak and aching as she felt. “Yes, _yes_.”

Rey ran a finger down the side of his jaw and tilted his chin up. He gazed into her eyes, and whatever traces of hesitation she once saw there soon gave way to a look of love that mirrored her own. “I’ll take it slow—yellow, right?” she waited for him to nod before continuing. “Keep your eyes on me and follow my breathing.”

She took in a breath and held it. Ben’s throat tensed, but he followed her example. She exhaled, and soon so did he. Rey inhaled again and reached between them to once more slide her fingers down the length of his cock. She positioned him at her entrance and then, slowly, with her eyes never leaving his face, she lowered herself down along his first few inches.

Ben’s breath caught in his chest. She waited, giving them both a chance to adjust to this new, deeper intimacy. _Everything_ about him was big—of course his cock wouldn’t be any different. Not that she minded. Not exactly. It just meant she would have to give herself a little more time to adjust before she could really enjoy this.

“Relax,” she whispered, saying it to herself as much as to him. He nodded once, and she shifted on his lap, taking him even further.

It didn’t take too long for the pressure inside her to ease off. Little swells of pleasure picked up again as she took Ben deeper, setting a rhythm that was almost tortuously slow for them both. Their gazes tore at each other’s faces, dark eyes glittering as they moaned, gasped, and let out little huffs of breathless laughter, sharing in the kind of wordless joy only two people brought this close could ever know.

Eventually, Ben’s hips began to buck up in a faster pace. He clung to the backs of her thighs, tightening his grip as she fell into the rhythm of his thrusts. They were wild, powerful, unrestrained. His eyes flutter closed as he pumped harder, faster, deeper, now fully in control. His nails scraped along her soft skin, hard enough to leave little red welts where her blood couldn’t quite come through.

Rey dragged her nails down his neck, across the hard, rippling muscles in his back, over and over again. Their growls turned into groans turned into gasps.

“ _Rey_.” Her name burst from his lips. She shivered at the raw, primal heat of it, of her name transformed into a cry of lust and love and open, aching _want_. “Rey, I’m—”

She sank her fingers into his hair and pulled. The dark, wavy strands were slick with sweat and soon slid out of her grasp. Her kisses were clumsy and rushed as she sought the curve of his ear. “I love you,” she hissed, grinning a mouth full of teeth as she heard him moan in awe and wonder. “I love you, I love—”

“Look at me.” His voice was ruff, insistent. Rey leaned back and met his hard stare. A muscle flickered in his face, just beneath his left eye. His jaw tightened.

“I love you,” she said again, peering into the dark heart of his eyes. Something flickered in his gaze, a quick hint of softness that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He shut eyes his, thrust into her once, twice, three times more.

Ben came with a growl, his climax a snarling, vicious thing that made Rey’s own arousal spike in a surprising leap. She never knew she could like this, never knew she could like to have a man’s teeth and nails scoring her neck and back and thighs. Never knew that she would want a man to claw at her hard enough to tempt her blood to run free, while it was already setting every vein aflame. Nor did she know just how much she would prefer taking fistful of his dark hair and pulling on it, tilting his hungry expression back so that she might reward it with kisses. It was a marvel that she could and would and did prefer this position on his lap, neither of them on top, but balanced together, meeting thrust for thrust, pulling and pushing and giving and taking and above all, above everything, loving, loving, _loving_.

When Rey came again, it was a high, piercing cry. It shattered across the room, and for a moment her vision darkened until she could see nothing at all—not Ben’s reverent, flushed expression nor his heart-shaped, kiss-swollen lips, not the warm golden light of her bedroom, and the pale red sunlight as the day outside gave way to dusk. Rey saw none of these things, but peered instead into that same devouring darkness that had taunted her dreams.

 _You can’t have this. This is ours, his, mine, together, and he’s mine, mine,_ mine _._ Rey bared her teeth against the shadows and bit on her tongue hard enough to draw blood. “I’m yours, yours, yours,” she hissed, speaking not to the sinuous, rippling blackness, but to her lover, still inside her. She knew she was repeating the vow Ben had made to her weeks ago, when they first kissed in his studio, just as she knew he would recognize, too.

"Nothing can keep us apart," he said. "Nothing. Not ever."

"Nothing and no one," she sighed, Her blood seeped into the words. The necessary price for a promise made in the depths of a heart. "Not ever."

Rey felt no pain in that moment, nor was there any pleasure. She was a hard, heavy weight that cleaved through the darkness, all burning light and radiant defiance.

 _If this is the price of loving Ben, then I’ll take it,_ she said to herself as they settled against the tangled blankets and sheets. She said it again as Ben nestled against her chest, giving her breasts slow, grateful kisses.

As she lay staring at the ceiling, stroking her lover’s hair as he fell into a peaceful sleep, Rey closed her eyes and took comfort in this familiar darkness. Her own sleep came upon her in short, sharp fragments, but for once, she did not dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i tried to offset the angst of the previous chapters with both fluffier bits + plot intrigue + some good ol' gratuitous smut. hopefully it made for a good chapter! it's kinda hard for me to be the judge lol
> 
> also, just to outright clarify: in this fic, rey's twenty (going on 21). i only aged her up because i liked the whole, round number (idk symmetry).
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	7. Crazy love crazy love crazy love crazy love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey crossed her arms. “Are you ever going to tell me why you want nothing to do with your family?” 
> 
> Ben strode across the room and took a seat on the edge of her couch. His posture was straight, tense, as if someone had him pulled up by a string. “It’s not something I like to talk—”
> 
> Before he could finish, Rey stepped forward and slapped the laptop shut. The music clicked to a halt, filling the apartment with silence.
> 
> “You have a mother,” she said, staring mercilessly down at him. “You have someone who loves you, who gives a damn about you—what could possibly make you throw that away?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Very small moment of self harm (scratching) in the part when Ben tells Rey about his family.
> 
> Also there's uh, kinda a little rough foreplay/sex towards the end. So if that's not your thing, then mea culpa!

It was hard to reconcile this new Ben with the man Rey had first met. Where he had once been mercurial, almost unpredictable, he was now almost… tender, a loving, attentive man whose oddities were now charming.

His moods were less dark and churning, more hesitantly hopeful, as if he were taking the first tentative steps in the sunlight after living underground for far too long. He even seemed to be sleeping better: Rey hadn’t heard him scream in his sleep since that last, awful night when she’d broken into his apartment.

 _At least one of us can relax._ She wasn’t bitter, no—nor did she regret the bargain she had made for Ben’s newfound happiness. She had promised to pay any price for that and would stick to her word no matter what tried to put that vow to the test.

So when she climbed out of bed one morning with a strange, gnawing ache in her side, and she lifted up her shirt to see four long scratches aligned with her ribs—the very same wounds she’d once seen on Ben’s chest—Rey knew she could not panic.

 _This is the price._ They were already so alike in their pain, in their stubbornness—even if they couldn’t agree on the simpler things, like music or movies or, heaven forbid, _pizza_ toppings, she and Ben could undeniably connect on a level that even Rey’s dearest friends barely understood.

The less she slept, the more her body became a collection of wounds without a source. She learned to carry a small care kit with her, and carefully adjusted her wardrobe to hide the worst of the marks. Ben noticed them at first, and though he would press the tenderest of kisses against her bruises and the little flat white squares of her bandages, he never asked where they came from. The look in his eyes said it all. All the hurt that had fled his body on the night they’d first made love had not, in fact, disappeared for good—it just found a new home to ruin. 

* * *

 

With all this spinning around her head—her time with Ben, their bond; the wounds that leapt from skin to skin, like stigmata, but twice as holy; and that damnable black door, burning itself at the edge of Rey’s vision, taunting her, demanding her attention—Rey knew she was letting a few other things slip through the cracks. As the semester drew to a close, she knew that the best she could hope for was a 3.2, and apart from the double shifts she was pulling at The Mad Batter, she barely left her apartment at all.

So it came as no surprise to Rey that, when she was rushing out the door to yet another shift that she would be yet again late for, she crashed right into her friends.

Guilt flooded through her at once. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m already late enough.”

“You don’t have to work today,” Rose said. “We came here to ambush you.”

“Er… what?”

“Holdo’s in on it—we told her how you’ve been a ghost this past month, and she said she’d help.” Rose shrugged and then looped her arm through Rey’s. “So, you know. Sorry about going behind your back, but congratulations, you don’t have to work.”

Poe took Rey’s other arm and gave her his best, dazzling smile. “And lunch is on us.”

Rey’s eyes flickered over to the only one among them who’d stayed silent. Finn’s gaze was, as ever, far too quick to see and understand—it was the understanding that hurt the worst.

“I’ve missed seeing you around, peanut,” he said.

“I’ve missed you too,” she said, her words strained through her tears. “All of you—I mean it. I have.”

But that’s how it went. Love, especially new love that felt old and easy to slide into like a well-worn glove, was a selfish creature. It craved attention and kisses the way some starveling aches for a meal. And the more she and Ben shared, the more Rey’s heart became a throne of _want_.

And the more she loved, the more she wanted, the more of herself she sealed away from the people who had loved her first: her friends.

They were, naturally, eager and readily available to forgive her. Poe waxed poetic about his and Finn’s honeymoon period—and how it came around usually during the summer time, so they could get some good use out of saved up vacations. Rose chimed in when she could find a long enough moment where Poe and Finn _weren’t_ bickering politely, back and forth, like a dance. Rey watched it all in silence, feeling like a trespasser in their conversation.

She did not speak again until they arrived at the BB-8 Diner, when it came time to place her usual order.

“So we ever gonna meet this guy?” Finn asked, taking a long sip from his mug. He made a face. “ _Ugh._ Cold cocoa.”

“We’re both… private people,” Rey said, spinning her fork between her fingers. As she spoke, the storm clouds that had slowly gathered in the sky now split apart with a groan, letting out a torrent of rain. “At least for now we are. And we keep such different schedules; we barely have enough time for each other between my work and his.”

“So you finally found out what he does?”

She nodded. “Rose had it right. He’s an artist.”

Poe laughed, and not very kindly. “So what’s his _real_ job?”

Rey refused to dignify that with a response—but she also didn’t know have an answer. How _did_ Ben get his money? She assumed an inheritance was involved; if his family could afford to give him a house in the Hamptons, then they must be the sort of rich that would make her physically ill to think about. But he was obviously no longer in touch with them. Didn’t trust fund kids usually have to stay in contact with the people they owed their wealth to?

“What kind of art does he do?” Rose asked, jarring Rey from her uncomfortable thoughts. As expected, she didn’t stop at just the one question. “Does he take commissions? How about tattoos? Paige and me were thinking about getting matching ones on our wrists, you know, like our necklaces.”

“I dunno. I could ask him for you.”

“Well don’t go getting his hopes up. Not yet, anyway. You got any of his stuff on hand for me to see?”

Rey nodded, and she fished her phone out of her jacket pocket. “There should be a few of them in the first couple slots of the gallery,” she said.

Rose stared at the phone. “I’m, uh… I’m not gonna see anything _personal_ in there, am I?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

Rey rolled hers. “ _No_.”

“Just had to check,” she mumbled, and tapped her way through the phone now that she knew she was in the clear.

Rey watched her friend’s expression shift rapidly through a collection of moods. First surprise, all quick blinks and sideways stares; then confusion, the sort that made her thin eyebrows hitch together, and her small mouth curl down into a sickle pout. Eventually, Rose’s face returned to a neutral expression, the kind that would fool most people into thinking she was displeased—but Rey knew her better than that. She was looking carefully, her gaze critical and precise like a scalpel.

“These are… well, no offense, but they’re really creepy.” Rose pinched the screen a few times, zooming in to pore over the details. “Like—seriously creepy. But good!”

Rey knew exactly which paintings Rose meant—she’d had the very same reaction when she first saw them, too.

The first painting was called _Family Legacy_. Ben had used several layers of cheesecloth instead of just one canvas to paint on, arranging each layer in such a way as to make the different images stack and bleed over. The resulting effect both forced the eye out of focus and yet required careful examination to make out any of the images at all.

The first layer of the painting was a knot of childish scribbles, crayon depictions of slanted houses with curlicue corkscrew smoke spirals rising up from the chimneys. Vultures sat hunched on every rooftop, their wide, pupil-less eyes ringed in angry swirls of red. Below the center house, in what looked to be both the maze of an ants’ nest and a coffin, was a small figure—a child, with a mop of curly black hair, a long nose, and ears that stuck out from his oval head. His wrists were bound together, forcing his hands and fingers to weave as if in prayer. A golden smear acted as the manacle, all diamond cut and mottled like newly shed snake skin.

The second layer was a woman’s portrait similar to the _L’Inconnue de la Seine_. Her round cheeks, soft blushing-rose lips, and billowing curls of brown hair were so finely detailed, so delicately shadowed, that it made sense to have her framed in a place of honor in the painting’s center. Red carnations, poppies, and dried myrtle formed a crown atop her head. Rey had looked up their meanings: _My heart aches for you_ and _admiration; eternal sleep_ and _oblivion; love_ and _marriage_. She wondered who the woman was—his mother, perhaps? A grandmother?

The final layer was, perhaps, the eeriest of all. At least the others had some sort of beauty to them. Ben had painted a helmeted skull with real teeth glued in, and it loomed over the spider-webbed shards of a mirror through which six different faces were shown. In clockwise fashion, they were: a woman’s wide brown eye; a man’s wrinkled brow and gray-streaked hair; a narrow, suspicion-sharpened blue eye in which a green light was reflected, like a bolt of lightning. Two different lips framed the bottom of the shards: the upper lip was the same cupid’s bow shape as the dead woman crowned in flowers, while the bottom was chapped, the skin cracked an oozing tar.

What any of that had to do with Ben’s family, Rey shuddered to think.

The second painting Rey had saved on her phone was far simpler by comparison. _A View from a Room on Shelter Island_ , it was called. This one showed a teenage boy sitting in front of a window, his shoulders bunched up like a guard at his back. They cast a shadow behind him that stretched out just a bit too far. Upon closer inspection, the shadow didn’t belong to the boy at all, but to a man, his head bulbous, and his hands long and thick with claws. An almost brazenly cheery summer’s day gleamed outside the window, taunting both the boy who watched it from his dismal dark room and the viewer turned voyeur to the child’s gloom.

The final painting, and Rey’s personal favorite, was a blown up, boxy, pixelated portrait of Ben’s own face in mid-scream. _Self Portrait,_ it was called, _Or, the darkness understands what the light does not forgive._

Rose passed the phone over to Finn’s open hand.

“Can we at least know his name?” he asked, taking it.

Rey knew he wasn’t prying. She liked to imagine Finn’s concern was something similar to how a brother might feel towards his sister’s burgeoning social life: curious, yes, but mostly supportive.

Still, even knowing this, Rey hesitated before answering. Ben _did_ technically have two names. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say he would prefer most people to call him by his pseudonym—a fact which made her cradle his real name all the more tenderly against her heart. To the world, he was Kylo Ren, but to her, alone in the dark, in the comfort of their arms and the tangled sheets of their bed, he was _Ben_ , hers and hers only.

“He works under the name Kylo Ren,” she said at last.

Finn’s eyebrows rose up in disbelief. “Huh. Talk about a small world.”

“You _know_ him?”

“My professor does, I think. She wrote a bunch of articles about art catharsis and kids with mood disorders about fifteen, eighteen years ago? She used code names for them all of course—Jane or John Doe, stuff like that—but one of them was Kylo Ren. Never heard a name like that, so it wasn’t easy to forget.”

A sliver of ice slipped down Rey’s spine. _Art catharsis. Mood disorders._ She assumed Ben was… well, troubled, but she hadn’t thought it extended so early into his life as _childhood._ “It could be a coincidence.”

“Not unless he has access to child psychology essays written exclusively for the APA,” Finn countered.

Rey held out her hand for her phone. “Can you send that article to me?” she asked, pocketing it.

Finn gave her a long, searching look, his eyebrows still raised. Gently, moving so slowly that neither Rose nor Poe could notice, Rey shook her head. The almost imperceptible movement was enough of an answer for whatever question had passed wordlessly between them.

He shrugged. “It’s dry as hell and full of longass sentences and equally long footnotes—but sure, no problem.”

Rey breathed a sigh of relief.

Poe, however, voiced the question they were all thinking. “Why don’t you just ask him about it yourself?”

Rey turned to peer out the window as the sudden spring storm continued in earnest. It was a cold April rain, the kind that drowned the pavement, beating hopelessly against the concrete, desperate to reach the earth and life hidden underneath. “Talking about his past is a little… dicey,” she said, watching the rain slide down the window in waves. “It’s not exactly a happy topic. For either of us.”

Poe smiled. “He’ll fit right in with us, then,” he said, unconcerned. “But we’ll probably have to start using a bigger booth so we can all fit.”

“I’ll pass the invitation along,” Rey said. She tried to picture Ben among her small circle of friends—what sort of arguments they’d get in, what sort of jokes they would tell, and how successful they’d be at getting him to perform at least one (1) endearingly mortifying drunk karaoke session at one of their upcoming birthdays. The thought of including him in the family she’d found after long years of hopeless searching filled Rey’s heart with such a warmth that all she could do to alleviate it was sit back and smile.

 _If Ben belongs with me, then he belongs with them, too._

* * *

 

A few days later, as Rey was getting changed for work, she was seized by a sudden thought. She froze, her arm halfway through the short sleeves of her Mad Batter uniform.

“Ben?” she called down the hall.

The song he’d been listening too—something electric and sharp, with a looping, staticky beat—was quickly cut short. Moments later, Ben stuck his head into the hall, appearing in a swirl of black hair and a curious expression. “Yeah?” he said, leaning backwards from the living room—which still his impromptu art studio.

Rey held her hand against her hip as a spam of pain flashed through it. “What was it said you last week? The night we slept together?” She frowned, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “We were in the kitchen, and I asked you if we were dating—”

“I said a lot of things,” he replied. “And so did you.”

“Yes, I _know_ that,” she huffed, and stormed from her room. Too late did she realize her dress was only half buttoned. “But you said something about my job—my boss, specifically.”

Ben’s mouth tightened, his eyes dipping to her bared chest, and the crosswork of bandaids plastered there.

“Razor slipped in the shower,” she said quickly, before he could ask. “Now come on, tell me. How do you know my boss?

“Amilyn Holdo?” he said.

Rey nodded. “You called her Aunt Ami.”

“She’s not my _real_ aunt,” he corrected, watching as she hurriedly did up the last of her buttons. “She’s been friends with my mother long enough that she might as well be family. So that’s what I called her.”

Rey took a deep breath and tried not to wince. The cuts on her chest were still too fresh, and the pang in her hip hadn’t passed. “Some small world, isn’t it?” she said brightly, smiling.

“Bob Ross calls them happy accidents,” Ben mumbled, turning back to the little Acer laptop open on the coffee table. He tapped the keys with unnecessary roughness, and the song started playing again.

Rey blinked. The song did not improve by getting closer to it. “What in god’s name are you listening to?”

“A Blue Rose,” he said, walking over to his latest painting.

“Who’s screaming?”

“Laura Palmer.” He paused. “You’ve never seen Twin Peaks?”

“No, and you can judge me for that later. I’ll be late.” She walked over to him and lifted her chin expectantly.

Ben suppressed a smile as he gave her collar two little tugs, straightening them so they lay flat on her collar bone. “Take care,” he said, sliding his fingers up her neck so that they rested beneath her chin. He leaned forward and gave her a long, lingering kiss. “And tell Aunt Ami I said hi.”

Rey smiled. “Well that’s a nice change. Bet she’ll be glad to hear from you.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that,” he grumbled, and she left the apartment trying to puzzle out what that could have meant.

 

Ben still had the same song playing when Rey came back from work six hours later. It did little to improve her already dark mood.

“How can you concentrate with all this noise?” she asked, kicking her door shut.

“I can if you aren’t talking,” he said, equally peevish. There was a little black handkerchief tied around his neck, as if he’d recently been wearing it as a mask. “Can you come here for a second? Please?”

Rey stared at him as she shrugged out of her coat.

He stared back. “I said please.”

“I know. I heard you.”

Ben’s dark eyes made a quick pass around her face. “You told her, didn’t you?”

Rey didn’t have to ask who he meant. “I did.”

“And what’d she say?” he asked.

That guarded look Rey so hated to see slid back into place on his face. It was like a mask or a shield to hide the hurt within.

Rey held off on answering until she was in the living room with him. “Holdo said she is solemnly sworn, on punishment of damaging the single most important friendship of her life, to tell your mother not only that you’re still alive, but that you’re also not interested in letting her _know_ you’re alive.”

Ben tilted his head. “That’s a little harsh for her to say.”

“She didn’t look angry when she said it—she didn’t sound angry, either.” Rey chose not to describe the way Holdo’s fists had balled up at her sides as she fought off tears. _“How dare he do that to Leia,”_ she’d hissed. _“After all these years, after no word at all—how did you even_ find _him?”_

Ben paused, noticing her distraction. “But you’re angry. Aren’t you?”

Rey crossed her arms. “Are you ever going to tell me why you want nothing to do with your family?” she demanded. “Or can you at least let me know why you never said that hey, you’re mum is one of the senators for New York?”

Cautiously, moving as if he were a man dreaming underwater, Ben pulled the black handkerchief from off his neck. He strode across the room and took a seat on the edge of the couch. His posture was straight, tense, as if someone had him pulled up by a string. “It’s not something I like to talk—”

Before he could finish, Rey stepped forward and slapped the laptop shut. The music clicked to a halt, filling the apartment with silence.

“You have a mother,” she said, staring mercilessly down at him. “You have someone who loves you, who gives a _damn_ about you—what could possibly make you want to throw that away?”

“They did it first,” he said, staring at Rey’s hand. She watched his own hands curl up in response to her barely bottled fury. The black cloth crinkled in his hand, but the gesture wasn’t made in anger, no it was something worse, a sort of shrinking, instinctive defense almost—almost as if he expected to be hit.

 _They?_ “You mean both your parents?” she asked.

Ben nodded. “Han was never around, so that’s damage _in absentia._ ”

Han. Not dad, not my father—just the first name, delivered with all the warmth of a shard of ice from the first winter’s freeze.

But then she realized what he said. _Damage._ The thought made her heart twist on a knife of its own wielding. “Did your mother hurt you?”

“In what way?”

Rey’s face all but crumbled under the sudden flood of tears. “In _any_ way, Ben.”

When he answered, his voice was mechanical and lifeless. But this, too, was an act of defense. Almost as if he expected Rey to tear into him again. “I had a mother who said she loved me very much, and who clearly loved her job even more.”

Rey stepped forward, moving slow enough so that Ben could watch her every gesture. She never took her eyes off his face, even as she hunched down to kneel in front of him. “I’m listening,” she said, offering her hand.

Ben took it quickly, like a drowning man eager for air. “They gave up on me first,” he said, cruel and clinical. “They gave me up the second they found out I wasn’t going to be some picture-perfect poster boy my mother could lug around for good press and sympathy votes." He breathed hard. "And I don’t _know_ what made them do it—I didn’t _do_ anything, and even if I possibly could have done something wrong, I was—I was a fucking _kid_ , okay? I was five, six, I dunno. Young, all right? You’re barely a person at that age, how could you do something so wrong that your family would get _sick_ enough to be _ashamed_ —”

“Hey, hey. Shh.” Rey squeezed his hand. “Relax. Take a breath.”

Ben closed his eyes and did as she said. “They gave me up to nannies and _au pairs_ , to aunts and uncles—like Ami and Lando, when he was still around. Then when it was obvious I wasn’t just _acting out_ , that there was some deeper fucking damage, they gave me up to doctors and shrinks and group homes. Said it’d be like _camp_.” He snorted a laugh. “That’s how I spent my summers, when all my other friends were going on vacations. I got shipped off the Shelter Island to work out my feelings with the other head cases. Fuckin’… Hux and Phasma— _they’re_ the ones who were certified, okay? Not me! You wanna see messed up, you go talk to _them_!”

Rey did not bother to point out that she had no way of contacting whoever these people were. She did, however, make a note to look for their names in the essay Finn still had yet to send over.

“And then when all that failed, they asked my uncle—my _real_ uncle—to take me in. I heard them talk about it. Probably thought I couldn’t hear them, that I was _asleep_.” Ben bared his teeth at the word. “That should give you some idea about how fucking clueless they were. I never slept more than thirty minutes a night in that fucking house, and if either of them had spent more than _two hours_ there, they’d _know that_.”

Ben ran his free hand over his face, scratching his nails against his cheek and jaw. He did it over and over again, until the scrapes started to bleed.

Rey held out her other hand for him to take. Eventually, he did. The black cloth hung in their grasp like a shadow.

“They said Uncle Luke was my last chance before something more serious." Ben bit his lip. "Well I wasn’t stupid, okay? I knew that meant more group home shit. Or maybe a clinic upstate, some place they could hide me ‘til mom got re-elected.” His laughter was a hard, bitter thing. “That’s my mom. Couldn’t miss a second of the campaign, not even while her son fell to _constant fucking pieces_. ‘Have a nervous breakdown on your own goddamn time, kid!’”

“And what about your—what about Han?”

“What about him?” he shrugged. “He was mostly out of the picture by then.”

Rey’s face glittered with tears. “Well… what about your uncle?” she asked, clutching at straws. “He must have wanted to help.” _They can’t all have hurt him,_ she said, praying desperately to a past she could neither control nor command anything from. _Not every person in his family could have hurt him—don’t tell me that’s what happened, don’t, please._ What good was a family if all they did was hurt you? How could you call that a family at all?

Ben curled his hands away from hers. He gently slid the black cloth across her tear-stained cheeks, drying them. “It wasn’t my uncle’s job to fix me,” he said, trembling. His dark eyes glossed over with every word. “It’s _no one’s_ job to do that, okay? And maybe I’m—maybe I’m not something that needs to be fucking _fixed._ Maybe this is just me. This is just how I am and—and—”

“I’m sorry,” she said when it became clear he couldn’t finish speaking. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’m sorry.” Rey said it over and over again. She said it as she threw her arms around his neck, kissed him from cheek to cheek, and down and around the curve of his jaw. When he closed his eyes and another wave of tears spilled out, she kissed those too, drinking the salt of his grief. “I’m sorry,” she said again and again, saying it for all the times that his parents should have but hadn’t.

They stayed locked together in whispers and tears and hushed, gulping sobs. Ben’s tears came in halting gasps and shudders, first like a man trying not to make a sound, and then he was wailing, each sob so deep and heavy that she thought he might break beneath each one.

Ben wrapped his arms around Rey’s back and crushed her to him, as if his bones sought her bones, as if his heart needed her heart to beat and bleed, as if his life was made for the shaping and caring of her own. He slid his fingers through Rey’s hair, pulling it free of the loose twist she’d pinned it in.

“And none of that is even the worst of it,” he whispered into her ear, kissing and biting her cheek. “That’s not the worst by far.”

Rey shivered at the unexpected thrill of his teeth. She tilted her head back, baring her throat to him, hoping he did more of the same. She scratched her fingers down his neck. “And what’s that?” she asked.

Ben’s mouth closed over hers. He bit down hard, a kiss that walked the line of love and hurt. “ _You are._ ”

Rey froze. Her breath crouched inside her chest, not keen to leave until she knew it was safe.

“I know you lied to me, Rey,” he continued, his voice a sharp, jagged thing. It cut her just to hear him speak. “I asked you not to open that goddamn door, but you did, I _know_ you did—you _had to_.”

Rey opened her eyes and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his. “What makes you so sure?” she asked, matching her voice to his. They were in confession now, the two of them. All hushed breath and whispered sins.

Ben cupped her face in his hands and shook her until the world began to spin. “Because I don’t see it anymore. I don’t see it and that’s—that’s wrong, it’s impossible, He said it would never leave for as long as I breathed. And because I _know_ you. I know your face, I know your pain—I know it like mine because it _is_ mine. A mirror, an echo—the color and shape.”

Ben kissed the bruised shadows under her eyelids, the telltale traitor signs that sleep had, indeed, been a stranger to her these past few weeks. Ever since that night in his studio, when she’d heard the voice behind the door. “I know you’re tired all the time,” he continued. “I know you aren’t sleeping like you used to. I know you don’t dream anymore, that it’s me alone over there, in here.” He pulled a hand off her face and tapped the side of his head, jackhammer fast. “And I know if you _do_ sleep at all, it’s just the one dream, the same one, over and over again. The one that used to haunt _me_ —the one with _Him._ ”

She watched his shoulders tremble as he sucked down long, gulping gasps of air. When Ben kissed her again it was softer, almost chaste, making up for his earlier ferocity. “I know you’re hurting—I know you’re hurt where I used to be. That you’re bleeding and bruised and I can’t make any of it go away, no matter how much I touch you, no matter what kisses I give you, no matter how hard I fuck you.” His breath was a sickle slicing through his words. There wasn’t enough air in the world for him to breathe and speak as one. “Why can’t I do for you what you can for me? How could I fail at the one fucking thing I want more than—more than anything? And I know that for as long as I live, that I’ll never forgive myself for it. For what’s hurting you.”

“Why would you need forgiveness?”

“ _Because I'm a failure! Because I can't stop Him from hurting you!_ ”

It was Rey’s turn to press her teeth against his lips and cheek. She bit down hard, surprised to hear his long, shuddering breath deepen into a moan. At least she wasn’t alone in liking this kind of cruelty. “Don’t you take this from me, Ben,” she said. “Don’t you deny me my own loneliness and sorrow and whatever hurt came with it long before you did. I was hurt before I met you. I have my own pain, my own past. They were mine before they ever belonged to you.”

Rey bumped her nose against his and bared her teeth in a beastly tenderness. “And as for the dreams—you hated them, Ben. You told me so yourself. You hated them, hated how they hurt you, and you said you would kill to get them out of you.”

He sobbed a kiss against her lips. “I didn’t mean for that to be _you_.”

He still didn’t understand. “You think I’m a victim—that I didn’t walk into this with eyes open and a mind made up. You think I didn’t want this." Rey tore off the first buttons of her uniform, baring the bandages on her breast. “I broke my word to you and yes, I’m sorry for it, but I am not sorry for walking into that—that shadow, that _thing_ that’s been yours to bear alone for all this time.”

Rey took his hand, the one still holding the black cloth, and pushed it against the blood that was seeping out of the wound over her heart. “He pushed His way into your life like a thorn, and all you could do was grow around the damage He made of you. I know exactly how it feels to live like that.” Rey ran her fingers through his hair, each dark strand passing over her palm like silk. “Guess that’s the only thing to thank my parents for.”

“Still,” he persisted. “You lied to me. You _lied,_ Rey. You gave your word and then you broke it and tried to hide it— _another_ lie!”

She shook her head and wound his hair into her fist, pulling tight. “I wasn’t. I _didn’t._ I won’t and I will never lie to you and you’d _better damn well start believing in me_.”

Ben turned his head to sink his teeth into her hand. “I do,” he whispered. There was blood on his lips, welling up out of a wound in the exact shape of her teeth. “I do, I _promise_.”

Rey took the black cloth from his hand and folded it over, end over end, until it became a blindfold. She kept her eyes on his as she tied the cloth over her eyes, cinching the knot tight. It pressed against her skull like a fist, pounding, insistent, determined to be let in. “I love you too much to lie to you. Even if the truth is cruel, even if a lie will give you comfort, I’ll never say it. Never.”

Ben’s breathing was harsh, labored. He reached out and closed his fingers around her neck, his thumb stroking her pulse point. “Why did you do it?” he whispered.

Hadn’t he been listening? Couldn’t he _see_? Rey pressed her lips together. “We owe who we are to the choices made for us,” she said. “I am nobody’s daughter. You are a boy caught in the teeth of something dark that called itself holy, a master that is a monster. We are what has been done _to_ us—and I want to change that. I will. I _must._ ”

She groped blindly, in this newly made darkness, for her lover’s hands. He offered them to her without delay, and they clumsily wove their fingers together.

“Only we get to decide who we should be,” she said. The air crackled around her, wet and crisp like a scab picked until it split. Something around them was breaking—apart or open, she couldn’t be sure which. The flavor of blood rushed into Rey’s mouth, revolting, hot, thick, like a monster’s kiss. She felt the darkness around her eyes pulse, shivering with anticipation.

 _This is not for you_ , she thought as she lifted her face to meet Ben’s lips. _This is his and mine, ours, ours, alone and only, holy._

“Don’t go into the dark without me,” Ben whispered against her mouth, his words like tears. “Don’t go where I can’t find you. I’ve spent so long alone, don’t ask me to go back to it again. I can’t, I won’t, I _won’t_. I don’t want to live without you.”

Rey smiled against his tears, tasting them. “What other home do I have but you?” she asked, opening her mouth just wide enough so that she could trace the seams of his lips with her tongue. “What hope do we have that isn’t us alone?”

With a growl, Ben drew Rey to him, crushing, kissing, tasting. He swept her up in his arms, and it was all she could do to wrap her arms and legs around him to keep from falling. But he had her safe in his grip, safe in the strength and fury of his tenderness. He backed her against the canvas, and the shock of the wet paint against her skin made Rey gasp. Ben devoured the sound with his lips, and as she savored the feel of him against her skin, she matched him, growl for growl, hissed promises and sharpened breath as he reached under her skirt and tore her panties in a single rip.

Ben sank into her hips and entered her with a wolf’s cry, a howl like a man touched by both death and the divine. She dug her nails into his neck just as his reached up beneath her dress to claw at the small of her back. Their skin split beneath their hands—blood for love, spilled for grief.

He cried out as he came, like a bolt of light cleaving the darkness. She felt his hands slide over her, tighter and tighter, until she felt like her bones would pop out to meet him.

“Rey. _Look_.”

Ben tore the blindfold off her eyes. Rey flinched against the sudden stab of light, her muscles trembling from the aftershocks of her own climax. She blinked, frowned, and waited for her vision to focus.

They weren’t in her apartment anymore. They were somewhere else entirely, somewhere impossible.

And yet... she knew this place. It was the hallway from her dreams. And Rey knew, without even having to look, that there would be a black door behind her, a burn in the world like a dark, unwelcome scar.

Something sighed in the darkness behind her. A muscle beneath Ben’s eye twitched, and he stepped back, taking Rey with him.

“Can you see this?” he whispered.

Rey nodded. “I see it,” she said, and carefully lowered herself to the floor. She took the blindfold from Ben’s hand and, very discreetly, pressed it between her legs, cleaning up whatever moisture remained. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

She took his hand. “Inside, of course. We’ll burn Him out of us, and we'll do it together.”

Ben looked at her with a gaze scraped raw and aching. “Together,” he said.

_Together._

And the darkness rose up to meet them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Ben's referring to can be found [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGjUl2QbgrQ), if you're curious. CW for flashing images and nudity. The Laura Palmer screaming bit happens around 3:28, and is, incidentally, my fave part of that song.
> 
> I could bore you with talks about how the original run of Twin Peaks--a show about a seemingly innocuous, strangely charming little town shattered by the murder of a local teenage girl--is a great thematic echo for this fic's own themes. Namely, how pain can be buried so far beneath the surface that it starts to manifest in weird ways (destructive habits, intense relationships, curiously prophetic dreams). But I'll try to contain myself.
> 
> Thank you so much, again, to everyone who comments on this and lets me know what they think. It can be a little disheartening to only hear from a small group of people, but with a ship fandom as large as this I guess I'm the beggar that can't be a chooser, as the saying goes!
> 
> If you're on tumblr, feel free to follow/@ me with whatever! My main is sansaoftheborealvalley, but my reylo-specific blog is reyloshrine.
> 
> Take care~


	8. Simple death feels infinite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Show me my parents, she used to pray. But that was a child’s wish, a girl’s self-pitying dream.
> 
> Now, here, then and there, in the hole at the bottom of her sleep, in the black, blank space, tucked away from the sun and sight of the world, Rey stood on one side of the yawning divide and had only one thing to say.
> 
> “Where’s Ben?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: descriptions of physical abuse, self-injury, and graphic injuries post-car accident. to skip the car accident bit, stop reading at "Ben watched as" and jump to "Ben felt the". to skip the abuse, stop reading at "He had no fear of" and start again at "Ben had come to". to skip the self-injury, stop reading at "It was here, at The Purpose," and start again at "Ben learned how to keep watch".
> 
> ♥
> 
> today's chapter was brought to you by [this song from my favorite band](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MPoHnTzQgY). congrats, i just tricked u into listening to japanese rock. a link to the translated lyrics is in the footnotes. also it's my humble opinion that if kylo were a real person, he'd totally listen to deg lol
> 
> today's chapter is also a lot more... trippy/experimental than some of the others. kinda like when rey looks at the mirror in the dark underwater cave. this was based more on jacob's ladder / silent hill / fatal frame trippy dream sequences, but the mirror cave is a better point of reference to those who might not be familiar with the others.

Sleep is but a simple death—a trial of the real thing. Sleep and dreams are two hands raised, and between them there lies a room. It has no walls, no doors, no carpenters to call makers. It is a room as in area, scope, and shape. And it is, naturally, lightless.

In a dark, dark room, tucked away from the sun and sight of the world, there lies a hole at the heart of sleep. A void that is not empty; an abyss that is not endless. A sea without water, a rift without a flaw. It is impossible, and yet it is.

In a dark, dark room, tucked away from all measure of time, there lies a blank, black space. And in that space stands Rey, watching, waiting, remembering—

A blue haze was the first thing Rey could recall of the day her parents left. A blue haze and a white like, round and wide apart, like car headlights. The pale glare of it cut mercilessly through the heavy rain, blinding her briefly, and casting all else in shadow.

In the first years following their abandonment, Rey’s parents were frequent visitors to her thoughts. Irony of ironies: her parents had left her behind, but never, not in memories, not in dreams, did they leave her _alone._ This did little to stop Rey’s heart from breaking itself like a wave on the long stretch of her loneliness. She could barely remember what they sounded like, never mind their faces. And so, as specters, shapeless and vague, her parents haunted the edge of her every moment, asleep and awake. They were there in every classroom daydream, when she stared blankly at the notebook in front of her or peered blearily at the white board in front of the room. She wondered where they were, right now. She wondered if they thought about her, if they missed her, if they wanted her back. She asked herself the same thing on the walk back home—to the group home, to the free trial foster family whose house would never be her home. She asked herself these questions in bed, curled up under a too thin blanket in too small a space to contain all the rootless ambition of a young girl’s life.

 _Where are they, are they thinking of me, do they miss me, do they want me back._ Rey’s mind worried these thoughts like clutching a rosary. _Do they miss me. Are they happy. Where are they,_ who _are they. Find me—find me—find me—love me._

The years passed. The questions never ceased. And her memory of that day began to change. A blue haze. A white light. The hiss of the rain kissing the concrete—and something else. A tall, dark shadow stomping through the rain beside her. A person, most likely—an adult, to be sure. But who were they? How had they found her—and why did they leave her, too?

Questions are made to meet an answer. It doesn’t matter if the reply is years in the making, and only discovered in the coldest, bleakest night, when sleep evades and dreams are strangers, and you are, as you have always feared, alone. An answer will come all the same.

An answer will be had, just as blood and truth will out. But a question with no response—a problem that eludes all solutions—is as leaning in for a kiss, and having your throat cut.

Rey learned this lesson when she was eleven-years-old. She could beat the questions against her brain as long as she liked. It meant nothing. It ended the very same as it began: empty, lost, alone. Nothing.

The bitterness of it stripped her heart raw like a desert storm. Burning, searing, a pain beyond a child’s skill to describe. Every time she shut her eyes, she pulled open the memory, trying to uncover more of the secrets buried inside. The blue haze, the white light, the dark shadow with the deep voice and the gentle, guiding hand. What else was lurking just out of her mind’s reach? Her parents’ voices, their faces? Why couldn’t she _remember_ them? The more she prodded her thoughts, the more they danced away. Her parents were like water in her hands—trickling away with every attempt made to keep them close.

Mirrors became a torment. Rey’s face was no longer _her_ face, but a tribute to her unknown makers. Every feature was a shrine, an altar—her eyes, their color and shape? Ikons. Her nose, little and rounded at the tip—her broad face and rounded chin? Reliquaries. Even her voice, her accent—impossibly posh, every breath a study of pretention—had to be theirs. Theirs. Not hers. Nothing was hers—just the last name, the one borrowed from _Bambi_ and his dead mother.

It is a foul, foul thing to be made a trespasser in your own body. To know, to feel, to fear that this is not your blood these are not your bones, this is not your hand touching your mouth, too scared to make a sound in the dark.

But that was years ago. Or perhaps it was only minutes, moments. Memories laugh at the march of time, can cinch and restitch it, separate and rearrange seconds—minutes—hours—however they please. Either way, Rey was not afraid of the dark anymore. She was not afraid to make a sound in the night.

 

Midnight is the witching hour for our most vulnerable moments. That is how the darkness behind the door felt, as Rey stood here, there, now, then, within its blank space. The darkness was weak, withering, as fragile as an egg rolled beneath a hand. But it was also endless. Each time Rey blinked, the blackness bled together, seamless, complete. Her mind scrambled to fill the shapelessness, but with what? Memories—a blue haze, a white light, a dark shadow and deep voice—or were they desperate things, dreams, the discarded dregs of hope?

A blue haze. A white light. English summer rain sliding through her hair, turning her three little bun bumps into sodden, drooping lumps. A memory, just a memory. How often had she stared into it, like a wishing well, or an enchanted shard of glass, begging the magic within to have mercy and show her the one thing she wanted above all else. How often had the dark, shapeless shadows of her parents faces crowded around her, circling like vultures but never settling, never landing. How often had she asked, _begged_ , really, for the bog and mire of her memory to give way to something solid and clear.

 _Show me my parents,_ she used to pray. But that was a child’s wish, a girl’s self-pitying dream.

Now, here, then and there, in the hole at the bottom of her sleep, in the black, blank space, tucked away from the sun and sight of the world, Rey stood on one side of the yawning divide and had only one thing to say.

“Where’s Ben?”

The darkness trembled happily to hear the question, like a dog well trained to fetch upon command. It shimmered, it shivered, and then it _bowed_ , pulling Rey forward through its long, endless roads without ever taking her off her feet. She shut her eyes, but opened them to something else, another sight, another moment, another memory, with colors she could recognize.

 

A blue haze, a white light. The Shelter Island Sound was a blur outside Ben’s bedroom window. Every day he stared at it and felt like his heart would break at the sight of it. It was as terrifying as a vein pulsing under a pale wrist. So much weakness, so much wanting and needing, and so close to the surface, where anyone might touch it.

Ben’s room in The Purpose, a group home for “troubled youth,” was little better than a broom cupboard. It was large enough for a narrow bed that he was fast outgrowing, with his gangly limbs and sudden growth spurt. Day by day his body grew more awkward and ungainly, until he was a stranger to his own bones.

Every inch of that room was a suffocation. Event he door, the one exit—except, of course, for the one-way rip out the window—felt like the firm, final tug of a noose around his throat. The bedroom door locked from the outside every night at 8PM sharp, and it could only be unlocked by a mechanism in the matron’s station at the far east side of the hall. There were speakers affixed to every corner of the room’s ceiling, through which announcements from the staff, or the Headmaster himself, would blare out promptly, without warning. Clipped commands for quiet, announcements of the meals scheduled for that day, or even a cancellation of any daytrips that might have been planned. The regular announcements were far more mundane and often spoken by the Headmaster himself: demanding they wake up, insisting they go to sleep—and sometimes, so softly Ben couldn’t be sure it was really happening, the speakers would click on at exactly midnight and let out the quietest _hiss_. Not like static, but not dead air, either—it sounded like breathing, like a silence crouched rapt and attentive in every shadow of every corner of his too small room. It was here, at The Purpose, named for Romans 8:28, that Ben learned that silence was also a sound.

 _“… God works for those who… have been called according to his purpose.”_ But what purpose could be found in hungry silence and watchful shadows? The answer, he hoped, lay hidden in the files inside the matron’s station at the end of the hall.

Ben had only been inside the station once before, on a dare with Phasma and Hux, his fellow Purpose inmates. The locking mechanism was attached to a long, bone-white panel in the left corner of the office, with each Purpose inmate’s name and room number set into it, divided into perfectly even rectangles. Like coffins. There were four notched dials set into the bottom of the panel that, when turned, conjured flat, black numbers over each circle.

“This is how they do it.” Phasma, already the tallest of the three, bent down to glare at the device. Her voice was like a knife in the gut, each word spoken in slow, decisive stabs. “This is how they lock us up.”

Hux elbowed his way past, his pale, sickly face looking even more feverish as he studied the panel. His thin cheeks flushed as he jabbed a finger at the bottom left corner, tracing the words embedded there.

Ben peered around him to read the name for himself. _Hux Electronics_.

“Father made this,” Hux whispered, his mouth twisting bitterly.

“Tough break,” Ben said, before he could think better of it.

Before Hux could do more than glare, Phasma’s hand darted out, taking them both by surprise. They flinched as, one by one, she pulled the dials off the panel using the small pen-knife she kept hidden up her sleeve. She twisted and snapped the small plastic wheels the same way she dug out the splinters and thorns that the Headmaster pressed beneath her fingers. They watched as she then dropped each dial on the floor and kicked them out of sight with a single sweep of her foot.

“What are you doing?” Ben hissed. “They’ll find out we were in here!”

He knew at once that he made a mistake. He shouldn’t have opened his mouth, shouldn’t have said a thing—silence, in this case, was the safer sound to make in response to his other inmates’.

Phasma’s eyes were cold chips of glass. She held out her pen-knife, slicing it under Ben’s chin. “I’m not afraid,” she said, her dull eyes glittering at the sight of his blood. “So why are you?” She smiled, but it was an empty look, just a stretch of skin, mechanical and forced. “Snoke’s little pet,” she hissed, “what could _you_ possibly be afraid of? He’ll never get mad at _you._ ”

But it wasn’t Snoke’s anger that scared Ben. It wasn’t the threat of his master’s wrath that tore at his heart like a storm that stripped the desert, all grit and heat and momentous fury. It was His disappointment.

 

This was the first lesson Ben learned from that old, withered, wasted man: to be angry is to have a gift, but disappointment feels like and thus feeds nothing. Disappointment, and its close friend bitterness, are as hemlock and belladonna—a kiss of death with no sweetness to savor. A bitter man cannot create anything, thus and must be broken to be free again. Snoke himself was the living proof of such a thing, and Ben knew better to question both a better and a far more powerful man.

Even as a child Ben could sense it, could see the truth of his Master without it taking actual shape: Smoke’s bitterness oozed off His entire presence, as dark as oil and twice as slick. “I was never young and full of promise—I was made for _purpose_ ,” he would hiss and spit, like a snake devouring his own venom. “And so are you, my young apprentice. No promise. No potential. Just _purpose._ ”

His hand was like a claw at Ben’s back, turning him to face the triptych that took up the entire southern wall of the first-floor studio. It was, as Snoke said, His finest work, the culmination of His life. “All of it gone in a single night—everything I was, everything I became stolen by a hairpin curve, a skidding car, and an arm shattered from shoulder to wrist.”

Ben watched as Snoke passed His hand across the scar that split His face. “I was all but skinned alive,” He said, returning the boy’s watchful, attentive stare. “It happened at midnight, young Ben. It took hours for anyone to find me. _Me._ The pride of the art world, a genius not yet seen since your grandfather, bless his mad heart, graced this world.”

Ben heard the coiled hate hidden inside his Master’s breath. It was like an animal, eager to pounce. “ _Hours_ I lay there, in my own heart’s blood and filth, glaring up at the darkness between the stars. _Hours_ I lay there, dead but yet living, crawling on the twilight between every breath and the last. It was a woman who found me—a _girl_ ,” he said, and spat again. A dark wad of phlegm smacked the floor, and seeped out like blood from a wound. “She pulled my teeth from my throat and placed them in my hand, one by one, and said, ‘ _Remember this—I showed you mercy. Do not let this kindness go to waste_.’” Snoke spat again, as if to tell the memory what he thought about _that_.

“The medics thought me dead, young Ben. They didn’t even ask, didn’t even bother to check, before they closed the bag over my head—me, _me_! As if I’d let death take me without a fight!”

Ben felt the hot, stinking breath of his Master’s labored gasps as he stomped across the room and ran his hand over the triptych. Four long gouges opened up in the canvas, and Ben watched, wide-eyed and wondering, as black blood oozed out of the painting. As if it were alive—as if it were a thing that could feel. And as he watched his Master’s lopsided shoulders sink and rise, with his breathing, with his inverted screams, with the tearless snarls that perhaps, at one point, might have been sobs, Ben realized that anger was not the worst thing to fear at all. He had no fear of Snoke’s temper—not when his disappointment was already such a terror.

It was Snoke’s disappointment that led him to press needles and thorns and shards of glass under Phasma’s fingers, until the keys of her grand piano were stained with the rust of blood and pus. It was Snoke’s disappointment that led him to turn the vulture head of his cane—a cane he did not need, but merely _wanted_ —and bring it down across the back of Hux’s hand for every stumbled sentence, every fumbled line. It was Snoke’s disappointment that led him to tie Ben’s right arm to the leg of his Master’s high-backed black chair, like a throne of onyx and bone. It was Snoke’s disappointment that led him to slam the vulture headed cane down upon that hand over and over, again and again, until every bone shattered, until every finger swelled up thick with unspilled blood. It was Snoke’s disappointment that led him to leave Ben weeping on the floor, fingers of his free hand scrambling to undo the knots without causing any more pain.

And all that for just a look. Just one look that fluttered across Ben’s face in an instant, a look his Master had declared rotten—ungrateful—insolent.

“You will learn to paint with your left hand,” Snoke had said, leaving Ben to his tears and pleas for a mercy that was not there. “And if you fail, then I will tie it down and break that one too.”

 

Ben had come to Shelter Island, and The Purpose specifically, to learn, to heal. It had been, of all things, his mother’s idea.

“It’ll be good for you,” Leia said, laying out the brochures like they were a deck of cards in a magic trick. “I’ve read all about this place, Benny Penny, and I really believe it can help.”

It was clear from the light in her eyes—large, brown, bright and clever, too much like his own—and from the determined set of her expression that she genuinely believed in what she was saying. She thought she was helping him, but all roads to hell were not laid solely by ill intentions. Good deeds done with no hope to harm can do exactly that, and maybe someday Ben would learn how to forgive his mother for shipping him off to the charnel house, and wondering why he came back burned.

What Ben learned instead was how to take pain and make it into power.

For every day of every summer, from the time he was nine until he turned eighteen, Ben stared out the window at the Shelter Island Sound for as long as the sunlight would last. He watched the water become a blue haze shot through with white light, and it was sitting here, through all these years, that he learned how to turn his face into a mask. It was here, through all these years, through every lesson (“ _Humiliation_ —you earned this by earning my _embarrassment_ ”) Snoke put him through, that Ben learned how to cry without uttering a sound. Not a single muscle would move in his long, bruised face, until he became as still as the statues that lined the walk up to The Purpose house.

It was here, at The Purpose, year after year after year, that Ben learned the difference between a thing that hurt and a thing he chose to feel. His body hurt, from the scars and scrapes and poorly mended bones that the hospital would have to rebreak and reset. But the pain was not something he had to feel.

It was here, at The Purpose, year after year after year, that Ben learned how to dislocate his own shoulder to escape from the crawl space under Snoke’s studio. It was a three-foot-tall, four-foot-wide basement grave for broken brushes, half-burned paintings from pupils’ past—and bones. Rows and rows of bones. Teeth, fingers, a jaw. Bird and rad skulls that tore open Ben’s skin, scoring his chest with their first layer of scabs and scars.

“If you insist on acting like an infant,” Snoke had said, after Ben had once complained that he was too tired to paint for a third day straight, “then I will treat you as one.”

It was here, at The Purpose, that Ben learned not to waste breath on screaming as his Master slammed the trap door shut with him on the other side of it. The lid closed Ben in the darkness, and he learned to listen carefully for the low rasp of the carpet pulled back into place. He learned to listen as Snoke’s footsteps disappeared down the hall, trailing off to a distant hum—and it was here, in this moment, that Ben learned was the best place to cry in peace. It was here that Ben learned there was no shame in crawling to freedom, so long as you never breathed a word about it to anyone.

It was here, at the Purpose, that Ben learned the best tools to use to cause a wound without a scar. Then he learned how to create those, too. Pain was not a thing he could feel—pain was a thing he could use. He learned how to bend his hands, after they had healed, into fists and hammer them against his chest, his ribs, knocking the hurt back into place.

It was here, at The Purpose, that Ben learned how to keep watch over the night without falling too long asleep. Night after night he sat sentinel to his own safety, his guard, his warden, his keeper of keys and secrets. He learned how to listen as the night shifted and stretched around the silence hissing from the speakers above his bed, as the darkness wove a web that kept out his Master’s bitterness. And it was here, in this darkness, in this night watch, that Ben could sometimes hear something else—someone whispering quietly, tenderly… A girl’s voice—no, a woman’s, yet somehow both at the same time—her voice was layered with youth and age, young and deep, soft and strong.

 _“Where’s Ben?”_ Accented. English. And yet so unlike Phasma and Hux’s voices, which were cold fury and smoldering contempt.

Who _was_ she? Nameless girl, faceless and yet so near and dear to his heart. Ben could see her in the darkness where he did not dream, could see her in the blue haze and the white light of the water bleeding through his tears—but the details of her always fled from his reach. Sometimes he thought he could hear her weep, hiccuping, heartbreaking sobs that tested the strength of his training. Pain was not a thing Ben could feel, no—but someone else’s pain, pain that was so close to his lonely own? That he could feel just fine. _Might as well ask blood to leave the vein._

Ben listened to this nameless, faceless girl cry, her voice like a child lost and hopeless, helpless. Where was she? Could she really be looking for him?

He would hold out his hand, long fingers trembling through the darkness, hoping against his fear and doubt that somehow, in some way, he could reach her. If hope was a miracle and miracles were magic, and magic demanded sacrifice, then who better to pay that price than Ben, the boy hidden in the shell and shelter of Kylo Ren?

The girl’s tears were always the most bitter just before dawn, when the darkness that tied them together bled away into the light. And it was here, under the blinding glare of the rising sun, that Ben would whisper to her the closest thing he had ever come to a prayer in his life: _I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

 

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

Rey knew her heart now—or at least, she understood it and the hurt long buried within. The dark looming shadow of her memory, of her dreams, with the gentle voice and warm hand—the dark looming shadow that had prowled the edges of her memory of her parents like a wolf baring his teeth—had always, only, ever been Ben. Rey knew now why her heart had leapt excitedly at the first sight of Ben all those weeks ago, in their apartment hall. She knew now why she’d grown breathless at the sight of him, pale and scarred, his soundless screams still echoing in her ears. Like from a fairytale both grim and divine, Rey had dreamed of him, knew him, _felt_ him long before she’d ever seen him. They had met for years and years before, in memories, in dreams, in that folded blank, black bit of timeless space that we crawl inside every night when we lay down to sleep.

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

Eyes open or shut, it didn’t matter. Rey didn’t need to see to know that she was a steady, stubborn light in the darkness.

In a dark, dark room, tucked away from the sun and sight of the world, there lies a hole at the heart of sleep. A void that is not empty; an abyss that is not endless. A sea without water, a rift without a flaw. It is impossible, and yet it is.

In a dark, dark room, tucked away from all measure of time, there lies a blank, black space. And in that space stands Rey, watching, waiting, ready.

She held out her hand and the churning, oily shadows, miasma-thick and rootless, bleeding wherever they pleased, parted beneath her fingers.

“Come back to me, Ben,” she said into the darkness. “Come back.”

The two of them, through all the long years, had come too far, suffered too much, and waited too long only to fail to find each other now. After all, what was time to a dream? What was a dream to a soul? What was a soul but a scrap of eternity  made flesh, made blood, made bone?

As she cleaved her hand through the darkness, Rey's fingers met something cold and hard, like ice-kissed glass. _A mirror._

 _"Show me my parents,"_ she used to beg of her reflection. Just a small piece, a glimpse. Mothers and fathers are god in the eyes of a child, but what of an orphan? To whom could they look to find the divine?

 _In darkness,_ a gentle, deep voice said. The voice of her shadow, her heart, her love, a soul that was more hers than her own. _In darkness, i_ _n dreams._

But beneath his words lurked a silence that was rapt, patient, attentive. A silence that was a sound of wanting, waiting.

_Snoke._

_**You cannot escape me, dear girl.** _

_And you can never have me,_ she snapped back, tearing her nails through the cold glass. It did not bleed like the canvas, but it did shriek at her touch. _And you will never hurt Ben again._

**_So says the empty bravado of a girl who too easily believes in broken_ _things._ **

That gave Rey reason to pause. It was only for a moment, but it was enough. A monster will make a home out of the smallest spaces.

**_Silly girl. Why do you think my ever-faithful apprentice told you to avoid the door in the first place?_ **

Rey heard the darkness creak like an old, gaunt thing, no better than a bag of bones. She felt his hot, stinking breath as he leaned in close, but she could not get away from him--he was everywhere, in every thing. There was no place in the darkness that did not fester with his presence, his purpose.

The darkness sighed, and a burst of stale, fusty air seeped across her face. **_Because he knew you couldn't resist._** ** _He knew you would betray him. I've trained him well, to expect bitterness, to crave it, control it, hone it. See how he pores over it like gold--see how he feeds his art with it._**

The revelation settled in Rey's thoughts like the twist of a knife in the ribs.

_**For as long as he creates, every brush stroke, every charcoaled shadow--in every photograph and portrait taken, Kylo Ren remains my creature. And, as you are his muse, so will you.** _

A chill spread up Rey's fingers, freezing her skin to the bone. She could _see_ her hand now, and a little more of the world began to seep in, too. She flipped her hand over and back, casting even more light out to chase away the darkness.

"Rey?"

She jumped. That was Finn's voice. But... how?

Rey looked up--and there Finn was. Her dearest friend sat across from her, peering anxiously into her eyes.

She blinked once, and the light expanded. No longer did she stand in that shapeless endless shadow. She and Finn were sitting at a table in the Hunter College library on East 68th street.

"How long have I been here?" Rey asked.

Finn frowned. "An hour... We've got finals coming up, remember?"

"We do?"

"You don't know?"

 _Should_ she know? How could she, if she couldn't even be sure this was happening? "What day is it?" she asked, her throat tightening.

Finn stared at her. "May 1st," he said.

Rey's blood ran cold.

Five days. She'd lost track of _five days._

_And Ben._

Rey was on her feet in a flash, her phone and keys in hand, her thoughts a knotted shamble of nerves. "I have to go."

"What's wrong?" Finn stumbled as he got to his feet, slamming his knee against the table. "Rey, _wait!_ "

" _Quiet!_ " the librarian hissed, but Rey was sprinting past him without a second glance. She slammed her hands on the metal bar that stretched like a brace across the library's glass doors, and pushed her way into the warm, late spring air—

And sat up in bed, sweating.

Ben stirred next to her. "You all right?" he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

Rey's breath was like a snarl of thorns in her chest. "What day is it?"

"Hm? I dunno..." Ben shifted, groping for his phone on the nightstand. He peered at it. "The fourth?"

"Of?"

"May."

Rey chewed on the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.

Two more days gone, lost.

Ben tossed his phone to the floor with a dull thud. "Hey," he whispered, slipping a hand up her back. "What's wrong?"

Rey pressed her face into her hands. "I think--Ben, I think I'm going mad."

His fingers froze on the small of her back.

"Do you remember when we--when we, er... made a mess of your painting?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

"And when we looked up, we were in a dream," he said, finishing the rest of the question. The bed groaned beneath him as he propped himself up on his elbow. His hair fell like a shadow over his face as he bent his head to peer at Rey's expression. "I remember. What about it?"

"Have you been... losing track of time since then?" she asked, chewing on her lip.

He didn't answer.

Finally, Rey turned to look at him. Ben's eyes seemed galaxies away, and for a moment, for just a trick of the light, his eyes seemed utterly and completely black.

She slammed her hands on his shoulders and shook hard. "Ben!  _Ben!_ Come back!"

He blinked, and the blackness was gone. "I only lose a few minutes at a time," he said at last. "Sometimes a few hours. It used to be worse, when I was younger. I would lose days, _weeks._ "

She stared at him. "This has happened to you before?"

He nodded. "Odd things are old news to me," he murmured, hurt. "I thought you knew that by now."

Rey scratched her nails through her hair. Her scalp seared with pain. "How is this _possible_? How can we be in two places at once? How can we do that and not know it's happening?"

Ben leaned forward and pressed his lips to Rey's neck. Her heart fluttered under his mouth. "I think we're both long past wondering _how_ impossible things keep happening to us," he said. "We should try to figure out _why_ instead."

She took a few deep breaths, calming herself. "What did you see? In the dream."

"Mostly memories. Old nightmares coming back." He shrugged, skimming his nose up he jaw as he kissed his way closer to her mouth. "Sometimes I saw you there. In the memories. Just flashes, nothing solid." He paused. "We don't always... wake up at the same time. I've tried to keep you safe if you're ever around me and you fall back into it. Into the dream. And I want you to know, Rey, that I haven't--that I wouldn't ever touch you or do anything to you if you weren't completely here."

"What?" Rey turned so fast that they bumped noses. "Ben, I never worried about that for a second."

"I just--I had to make sure you knew, okay? I couldn't keep you from the dream or the darkness or whatever it is that yawns between it--but I can keep you safe. Up here."

Rey pressed her forehead against his and closed her eyes. "I believe you," she said.

As Ben's lips warmed her skin, Snoke's words came back in an unwelcome, frustrating flash. _The girl who too easily believes in broken things._

Rey turned on her side and curled up against Ben's bare chest. He held up his arm, letting her inch closer to his heart.

"I saw you in the dream, too," she said quietly, but quickly. She had no way of knowing how long she would be here with him like this, or when the next "blink" might happen. "I saw what Snoke did to you--to Hux, to Phasma--at the manor." When Ben tensed beside her, Rey stretched up to press her lips against his neck, tasting the fear in his skin, and filling it with kindness. "And I saw you dreaming about me, long before we'd even met." She smiled. "It was just like you said."

"I wasn't lying."

 _He knew you would betray him._ "I believe you, Ben." _Please don't make me regret that._ "How long do you think we'll be like this? Fading in and out of our lives, skipping days"

Ben's arm tightened around Rey, as if he could give her shelter inside his bones. "I don't know... I'm not even sure why it stopped happening for me. One day I just woke up and it wasn't as bad as it used to be." He paused, giving it some thought. "Did you see anything on your side of things? Maybe there's a clue we can use."

"There was one thing... Words and phrases kept popping up, like a riddle or a code. A blue haze. A white light..."

Ben's gentle voice broke in, speaking the same words just as Rey gave life to them. "A desert storm. Midnight."

Rey shivered. "What does it mean?"

It took a long while for Ben to answer. When he did, his voice was whisper thin. "I think it means I have to go back... to Shelter Island. To the studio. To Snoke."

Little as Rey liked that idea, she knew that sometimes the worst decisions could reap the best benefits. She nodded. "Then we'll go first thing in the morning," she said.

"No." The word slice into her heart. Every nerve in Rey's body flinched. "Rey--Rey, listen. I know what I have to do, and I know I have to do it alone."

She twisted until she was sitting up, glaring hellfire and fury down at him. "Like hell you are! I'm not letting you go back there by yourself--"

Ben's hands closed around her shoulders, warm, gentle--he was only ever gentle with her; his was the kind of tenderness that somehow killed. "I _have_ to!" he said, holding her tight. "How can you even think I'd take you with me when you're hardly ever here anymore? This is the longest conversation we've had in _days,_ Rey! You've been gone for most of them. You just sit and stare off into space, and if you move or talk it's just--it's wrong. It's wooden, it's fake."

"Then let's go _now_ , while I'm still here--"

"I won't," he argued, persisting on his point, refusing to budge from it. "I won't, I _can't_." Ben's eyes were free of tears, but his voice was as scraped raw as a new wound. "You said you loved me too much to lie to me. Well that's how I love you, too. You can't come with me. I have to do this alone, by myself, _for_ myself."

Rey stared at him. Slowly, pitifully, she began to shake her head. "What if he's still there?" she whispered. "What if he's waiting for you?"

"Then he won't be waiting long," Ben said. He ran his hands up the sides of Rey's neck and pulled her closer, pressing kisses to the top of her head. "I can take care of myself.  I have to. I've had to do it for years before I met you. Remember?"

Something sighed in the room. Ben shut his eyes and listened to the silence. The hands that once held Rey's face now dropped to the bed. When he opened his eyes, he lowered his gaze to peer at the flat, empty stare in Rey's eyes. Trembling with every aching breath, Ben stared at the small mirrors of his reflection in the pair of bright, brown eyes he loved so well. And it was here, alone in her bed, in her room, in the life and love that they shared, that Ben finally pressed his hands to his eyes and let himself cry.

It lasted for but a few seconds, his vulnerability given way easily to viciousness.

"I know what I have to do," he said again. He climbed gently out of bed, taking care not to disturb Rey from where she sat silent, frozen, statue-still. "And I'll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: 'creature' and 'create' [share etymological origins.](https://www.etymonline.com/word/creature)
> 
> the quotation from romans 8:28 is specifically from the new international version of the bible. i find it to be unbearably creepy, especially when applied to snoke.
> 
> triptychs [look like this.](https://goo.gl/images/qyrPLA)
> 
> [these are the english lyrics to fukai](https://lunairetic.dreamwidth.org/565131.html) (that dir en grey song i linked above). please know that this is my own translation/interpretation. i have a bachelor's in english lit / japanese studies, and was an amateur translator for four years. i have not translated in a long while, so there are probably some errors/mistakes, and kyo's lyrics are notoriously difficult to really pinpoint. he deliberately removes a lot of context from his lyrics, which would be brilliant if it weren't so frustrating lol plus the song took me literally three and a half hours to translate.


	9. survive.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey dumped buckets of sudsy, soap-bubbled water across her kitchen floor and watched as it bled through the gaps between each tile. A blue haze, shot through with white light. Again and again, she scrubbed at the floor until her arms ached, until she could feel that pain in the root of her teeth. It was a good ache—an anchor, a reminder. My body is here, and so is my mind. I make it so, I make it so. It is, it is. I am.
> 
> But where was her heart? Where was Ben?
> 
> The light in Rey’s eyes dimmed when she asked these questions. And the answer, when it finally came, was a gift wrapped in darkness, a kiss as cold as the grave.
> 
> Exactly where he needs to be. It was clear that only Ben and Ben alone could confront the ghosts of his past.
> 
> “But what about me?” Rey whispered, tracing her fingers through the tiles. She hardly cried anymore, but when she did, this was how it came: each dropped one by one down her cheeks, like too much water seeping from a grief-soaked sleeve. “But what about me? Where do I need to be?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in my ongoing trend to trick y'all into listening to my fave music (is it working??), this chapter is brought to you [by this song.](http://sansaoftheborealvalley.tumblr.com/post/172342767566) i'm a bit chuffed at the accidental pun in the title--gekka reijin. REI.jin. :3c
> 
> also, the song is gorgeous and very appropriate for this fic. it's what i imagine ben is feeling in his time apart from rey.

“How can Ben ask me _not_ to leave when that’s the first thing he does?” Rey tapped her nails against her coffee mug, enjoying the little _clink-clink-clink_ chime on the porcelain.

Nervous habits like this kept her rooted to the world, even when the rest of her was far too content to drift away. It was getting far too easy to drift away from the world around her. The act itself was rootless, seamless, as simple and effortless as breathing. These habits—humming quietly, tapping her nails against any surface that sat beneath them, twisting a pen around her finger over and over again—pulled Rey back from the brink when she was about to blink out of it again.

They did not, however, do much to settle her restless mind. And so she asked another question: “How can he say he can’t live without me, then expect _me_ to know how?”

The silence that followed these words was only a little less awkward than the questions themselves. It didn’t help that silence itself was an unwelcome guest in the Tico household. The sisters’ living space was far too cheery to settle for anything less than an amicable atmosphere. With its daisy yellow walls (“To let a little bit of sunshine in”), pale blue doorways (“Like the first glimpse of the sky after a too-long winter”), and its ever-present perfume of lilacs (“We buy up every single candle we see; god help us if they’re ever discontinued”), the house was _meant_ to be vibrant. This was half the reason why Rey gleefully took up the chance to stop by in the first place. The other half, naturally, was to spend time with friends who had been wrongfully neglected as of late.

And yet, the reason for that neglect was never far from Rey’s thoughts. That she even posed these questions was as good as a confession that she wasn’t really there with them at all. Nor was she even thinking about their current tasks—sorting out fliers for Senator Organa’s re-election campaign. Paige was already on the team, and Rose pitched in help every now and then. At first, Rey joined just for moral support and an extra pair of arms to carry bags and coffee and neighborhood maps for upcoming canvassing, but she stuck with it, hoping to gradually earn her way up to meeting Ben's mother in person.

As Rey sulked, Rose and Paige shared a long look.

“Rey...” Rose said, hesitantly tearing her eyes away from her sister’s face, “You know I love you and support you and want only the best for you, right?”

“… Yeah?”

Rose nodded. Her short, black hair bounced with the movement. “Well can you do me a super solid favor and stop talking about this guy? At least for a few days?”

Another stretch of silence thudded down into the room, dividing the conversation into even more painfully quiet seconds.

Rey pressed her fingers tightly against the mug. Her coffee was getting cold. “I didn’t know I was that bad,” she admitted.

“It’s not _bad_ ,” Rose rushed in to say. Of the sisters, she was always better at mitigating any damage her honesty may have caused. Paige knew better than to cause any in the first place. “It’s just—well, it’s kind of intense. And I miss having a conversation with you that was… y’know. Normal.”

“But that’s how we were,” Rey explained, lowering her eyes. Her coffee was the exact shade of brown as Ben’s eyes. “Intense, I mean. That was normal for us—that _i_ _s_ us. That’s why this is so—” she caught her bottom lip between her teeth and forced herself to stop. “Sorry.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that he gave you some space,” Paige said, separating the fliers based on the colors of the post-its notes stuck to the top. She had six piles fanned out around her, like the arc of a rainbow. “You don’t just drop something all dire and heavy like, _I can’t live without you_ and not have a little pang of regret.”

“I think he was serious. And I'm pretty sure he meant it. Probably.”

Paige shrugged. “You know him best, babe. So here’s my two cents: either you trust someone, or you don’t. Either you take them at their word, and you keep hope alive even when you’re scared, or you don’t. It’s your choice. Now pass me the cookie dough.”

Rey couldn’t help but smile. “Technically that’s _three_ cents,” she said as she pushed the plate of half-eaten cookie dough closer to where Paige could reach it. The three of them had been picking at it over the past half hour, using little plastic _Lion King_ spoons.

“Don’t get smart with me,” Paige countered, and she passed two stacks of papers over to where Rey could read them. “And thanks for being here. For helping.”

“Thanks for letting me help.”

In truth, despite how divided her heart and mind were—half of it torn between worrying and wondering about Ben, the other half worrying and wondering if she were thinking too _much_ about him—Rey treasured little moments like this. Every minute she passed with her friends was a moment she knew would never come again. It was a maudlin realization, but really, the truth of it was more sweet than bitter. These friends of hers, with their defiant smiles and layers of in-jokes that may as well be a secret code, and their conversations that had been ongoing for years on the phone, in texts, in email, in group chats, were the closest and truest thing Rey would ever have to a family. And if she was learning anything in these bitter, brutal days without Ben, it was how to appreciate what she already had, instead of thinking about what she wanted.

And so Rey clung to these moments, these little pieces of time, for as long as she remained aware of them. She was no longer losing whole days to those strange blinking time skips, but even the hours lost to darkness were hours precious beyond compare. But there was no stopping it. She didn't even know why they were getting further and further apart.

Even so, Rey knew the darkness would come, like sleep, like death, like dreaming, whether she was ready for it or not. Life and waiting and hope wasn’t about will or won’t, but _when_. And all Rey could do was wait to meet it when it came.

 

The days passed.

And Ben did not return.

 

As time went on, more of the light crept in, giving Rey longer access to her mind and body. Where she once only had minutes at a time, now she had whole hours of awareness and control. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

No longer did she bolt up in a panic when she blinked from one moment to the next, as she had that day in the library with Finn. At her worst, she would give a startled gasp, maybe slam her knee against the table (if she was sitting at one) or jolt back in her chair (if she wasn’t standing), and then slowly begin the process of settling back into her own skin. By the time May was through, half of Rey's mind was a divided territory, an even split between the blank, black space and the light, all sun and sight. She often thought it were as if the two parts of her were in a war, and she was the disputed land cut in between. Every vein in her body became a trench, her every thought a bullet. She was an internal equinox, a Battle of the Blank Spaces, a War of the Roses. Rose White was her days and hours and waking moments, and Rose Red was the darkness, her fragmented dreams and even more fractured sleep. It was her love, her heart, her Ben, Ben, _Ben_.

Who knew that the darkness could be so warm and deep, a blood-thick red instead of a flat, seamless black?

 

Much of Rey’s time, in her mind, seemed to sit balanced on a blade. Without school to take up her time these days—finals had come and gone in… well, in the blink of an eye—she had that much more time to herself, to her own company. But to be her sole and solitary confidant after spending so much time with Ben was an odd, unwelcome change. She simply didn’t know what to do with her life now that so much of it was woven into and around someone else.

At first, Rey stayed in her apartment, in the hopes that Ben would simply appear beside her as if he’d never left. But this waiting—a waiting that hinged more on fear instead of resting comfortably atop hope—turned her heart into an anxious thing. Before long, her home felt like a home no longer. It was a tense muscle, a seething nerve, a beast ready to pounce.

So she did the only thing she could think to do in a time like this: she started to clean.

Stress-cleaning was a habit instilled in Rey during all those years she spent in and out of foster care and government-funding group homes—the word _orphanage_ sounded almost Victorian in its stark, bleak reality, but that was, in truth where she lived. And no matter how many times Rey returned to the same group home, and saw the same wan faces with eyes far older than their owners could ever be, the one constant comfort she could rely on was the necessity of cleanliness. There were always dishes to clean, floors to be swept and mopped; there were always clothes to dry and fold and put away, always food that needed to be cooked; always windows to clean and attics to air out. There was always a need to let the light and life and breath of the world into the house, either through brisk winter breezes or a rare summer gust of wind after a sweltering storm.

And so that’s what Rey did in her suddenly too large and quiet Brooklyn apartment. She cleaned. Every surface, every shelf, every corner and cupboard. She cleaned until her fingers blistered and bled, until the skin of her hands were scraped a raw, rosy red. She cleaned until her back and elbows and knees all throbbed with the same strained ache, like a violin string plucked _pizzicato_ over and over again. She cleaned until the bones of her body were like hinges whose only purpose was pain.

Rey dumped buckets of sudsy, soap-bubbled water across her kitchen floor and watched as it bled through the gaps between each tile. A blue haze, shot through with white light. Again and again, she scrubbed at the floor until her arms ached, until she could feel that pain in the root of her teeth. It was a good ache—an anchor, a reminder. _My body is here, and so is my mind. I make it so, I make it so. It is, it is. I am.  
_

But where was her heart? Where was Ben?

The light in Rey’s eyes dimmed when she asked these questions. And the answer, when it finally came, was a gift wrapped in darkness, a kiss as cold as the grave.

 _Exactly where he needs to be._ It was clear that only Ben and Ben alone could confront the ghosts of his past.

“But what about me?” Rey whispered, tracing her fingers through the tiles. She hardly cried anymore, but when she did, this was how it came: each dropped, one by one, down her cheeks, like too much water seeping from a grief-soaked sleeve. “But what about me? Where do I need to be?”

She had no answer. And no answer found her.

 

The days passed.

And Ben did not return.

 

Towards the end of June, in the final hours of the 24th, Rey noticed a change. More specifically, she noticed a change about herself.

All her wounds were gone. Every scab and scar and bruise and scrape that she’d pulled from Ben’s skin and pressed onto her body were gone.

As far as surprises went, this was a wonder and a terror both.

Through all the weeks leading up to this moment, Rey learned how _not_ to look at her body. Not for any shame or guilt, but as a simple act of survival. By not looking, she was also not feeling—she did not feel the sharp jolts of pain that accompanied a scrape or a cut reopened by moving too fast; she did not feel the low, roiling swell of pressure that passed through her back and ribs and hips and hands, as if twenty years’ worth of hurting were crowding into a place too small to contain it.

Rey could name these aches after the fact, like a doctor might diagnose a patient once she woke up in the ER: within the comfort of detachment, as if on the other side of a glass, dark, deep, and dim. But just as soon as Rey had mastered this habit, now it was no longer required. The wounds were gone.

From somewhere in the world outside her window, a dog began to howl, wolf-like, mournful. Rey’s reflection trembled in the mirror, but her hands were steady as she undid the buttons on her Mad Batter uniform. She pulled her arms through the short, puffed up sleeves, and bared her chest to her wide, wary glare, as if by shining more light on her skin, she might chase away this illusion.

But the truth did not change. The wounds were gone. Every scrap, every scrape, every seething deep bruise had vanished completely, no note, no goodbye—just packed up their pain and left, _posthaste._

Rey’s fingers skimmed the mirror’s surface. The glass was warm, inviting—and as she blinked, so fast, so sudden, in that small burst of darkness, she could have sworn to god and all his host of angels that she saw _Ben._

_“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.”_

Tears burned in her eyes, but did not fall. Where _was_ he? Why wasn’t he home, here, with her, where both their hearts belonged?

As her tears continued to smolder and refused to fall, another question washed up on the shores of Rey’s thoughts. What had Ben done so that she might earn this? What price did he pay? What had he given as tribute, as payment, so that she might have a body of her own again, a body free of phantom pains woven through her skin like stains?

If the impossible were miracles and miracles were magic, and magic had teeth and tongue and a throat, with an appetite that, like dreams, yawned across a blank, black, bottomless place, then surely Ben had to give something up to grant her this gift. Rey couldn’t imagine what that was. She didn’t _want_ to imagine what it was.

Oh, where _was_ he? Where did he go, where did he go—and why didn’t she try to follow him when she had the chance?

 

The days passed.

And Ben did not return.

 

One day, when Rey was helping Paige move into her new apartment in Queens (“Not so much an upgrade as a… side… grade.” “Side step?” “Yes, that.”), she came across something strange tucked inside the hall closet. There was only one shelf in the closet which was not, in itself, so very strange a thing—but there was only one thing on it. Like a shrine.

Most odd.

Rey couldn’t quite see it in the dark, and the closet light had long since burned out and never been replaced. So she reached in without fear or delay—which is a kind of courage in its own way: starving out your dread, denying it the feast of your heart. Only too late did she realize this may very well be considered rude—intrusive and nosy at the very _least_ —but by then she already had the object in her hand.

It was an instant camera, a squat little thing. Its case was a creamy eggshell white, with a thick black lens, as if viewing the world through a sphere of darkness.

Rey stopped Paige in the hall before she could squeeze past. “Shouldn’t you pack this?” she asked.

Paige looked at the camera for a moment. Then, she smiled. “Man, that takes me back a ways.” She shifted the box she was holding a little higher on her hip. “Rosie found that in a flea market when we were kids. She just _had_ to have it—you know how she gets—but the guy running the stall wouldn’t budge.” Paige pulled a face and continued, in a deep, drawling voice, “ _‘Now, I’m sorry, little miss, but you’re too young for something this delicate. You’d just end up breaking it.’_ Like that would matter if we _bought_ the damn thing first.”

As she listened to her friend reminisce, Rey cradled the camera in her hands. There were golden moon and star stickers arranged on the top and around the back, their edges faded white as if worn down by the constant press of fingers. “Well obviously you got it in the end,” she said.

Paige nodded. “She and I worked out a plan: if we could prove to the guy that we were good at fixing things, then he would have no choice but to sell it to us. But Rose was so shy back then—yeah, I know, hard to imagine, right?—so I had to do all the talking. We loaded up all the gadgets we’d salvaged from Mom’s attic, put it in Rosie’s Power Wheels car, and headed back to the market as soon as we could.

“So we hand over our record player, our old Rutenber electric toaster, and our Black Forest cuckoo clock— _that_ one was the real pride and joy. Then Rosie hands me a note to read out to the guy, but before I could even get through one sentence, he starts laughing.”

“That wasn’t very nice.” Rey was starting to wonder how this would have a happy ending.

Paige shook her head. “He was smiling, and he didn’t sound mean about it—but Rose still got all worked up. She _never_ talked in front of people, especially not strangers, but all of a sudden there she was, jabbing her fingers into every cog and screw inside that clock. She rattled off all the pieces and names as she went—in English _and_ German—and he listened to every word. ... Nobody ever listened to her like that. Like what she said mattered. And when she was done, he thanked her, and then he looked at me and asked if he could speak with our parents.”

Paige let out a little grunt as she set down the box and leaned forward, popping the bones in her back. “Oof. So one thing led to another, and after I spent a good, like, six hours totally terrified that Rosie and me would get grounded to oblivion, Mom called us down for dinner. She had this big smile on her face—and that camera was sitting in the middle of the table, all fixed up and shiny.” She smiled, but it quickly began to slip at the edges of her mouth. “She said she was proud of us. I mean, she always was, but I think… I dunno. Something about this must have really moved her. Like... we'd shown her that we could be okay even if she wasn't there to help us.”

Rey went very still. She hardly felt the camera in her hands—her fingers had grown far too cold.

After a quick look at Rey’s expression, Paige quickly cleared her throat. “Uh. Anyway. The guy who sold us the camera really hit it off with Mom, and he and his husband all became friends, and soon they were like uncles to us. And then they were our new dads, after Mom—well. Yeah. Good times. The End.”

Rey knew better than to pry into the meaning of Paige’s sinking smile. She had seen the altar that the Tico sisters kept in the living room—had seen the incense, the offerings, little paper gifts that burned to ash and, through smoke, through flame, found their way to their parents. Limited though her understand of religious rites and funerary customs were, Rey knew enough to understand that, for the Tico sisters, mourning was never about making peace with death. It was an offered hand extended into the dark, an affirmation of their love for the dead.

The light in the hallway began to dim, ever so slightly. On instinct, Rey tapped her fingers against the side of the camera, focusing all her thoughts on that sharp, plastic tap. “Does it still work?”

“It’d be a miracle if it did,” Paige laughed, and she stooped to pick up the box again, completely missing the twitch that flashed across Rey’s expression. When she straightened up, she struck a pose that would make Tyra Banks proud. “C’mon. Try it out.”

Rey lifted the camera to eye level. She peered through the glass at Paige’s smile, and pressed the shutter.

 _Klik! Hissssh._ The photo popped from the top, taking them both by surprise. Paige recovered quicker than Rey, and she took the photo first, giving the little black and white square an experimental shake. She held the photo up to the light with a frown. And she stared. And stared. And stared. As if she'd seen a ghost.

“Did it work?”

Rey watched in quiet horror as Paige’s eyes filled with tears. Gradually, as if her long brown gaze were pulled by a great weight, Paige looked over to Rey’s anxious expression.

“I think you’d better take that camera with you,” she said, with a quick glance at it.

Rey didn't have to see the photo to know what would be printed there. Paige's face showed it all.

“Don’t tell Rose about this,” she added, her voice watery and whisper soft. “Please.”

Without taking her eyes from Paige’s own, Rey unzipped her bag and shoved the camera into it. “Secrets are for keeping,” she said, and then she quietly left her friend to mourn in peace.

 

And the days passed.

 

When Rey finally worked up the nerve to take her own picture, she had to breathe deeply for five whole minutes before she could hold the camera steady. She had to breathe for five minutes more before she had the nerve to look at the photograph.

And... it was just her. Bright brown eyes, wide forehead, a lip pinned in the middle by her teeth, and a nervously expectant expression. Just her.

Alone.

The photograph shook hard, like a leaf braving a storm. There was a hole in Rey’s heart where her tears used to flow, like a river breaking against the stones embedded within. As she waited for her tears to come, wondering why she wasn’t more alarmed at their absence, she placed the photo on Ben’s side of her bed. Like a gift, like an offering. It wasn’t long before she slipped into the darkness of sleep, into a dream.

It was Rey's first dream in four months—at least, her first _normal_ one. Not the feverish madness and impossible space that had been everything she shared with Ben.

In this dream, she was back in the hallway—that same maddening stretch of space that had haunted her for years. But she wasn’t alone. Ben was there, walking ahead of her, and every now and then he would turn back with a smile.

No matter how fast Rey walked, she never got any closer to him. She even ran a few times, just to be sure that she couldn’t, in fact, reach him. She failed every time; Ben stayed too far ahead for her to reach, just as she stayed a few infuriating steps too far behind.

Then, Ben paused in front of a familiar door. She stopped at it. Stared. It was the same door to Rey’s apartment.

Her heart leapt into her throat. Could this be real—really real? Was he coming back to her? Would she hear his gentle tap on her door, and would she come to in the morning with his warm, solid chest pressed against her back?

Ben passed right through the door, as if both he and it were nothing more than air, than water.

Rey, however, had to turn the knob.

Behind the door was… another hallway. The same hallway as before.

Frowning, Rey peered into the distance ahead. Ben was there, already halfway down the hall. He paused, just as before, and peered back at her.

“Wait!” Rey sprinted into the hall, desperate to catch up with him—but once again, no matter how fast she ran or how hard she wished, she never got any closer. He always stayed the same distance away. Ever in sight, ever out of touch.

Once again, Ben passed through apartment door as if it weren’t there at all. Once again, Rey tore the door open and charged through.

And into the same hallway as before. The exact same—only Ben was further ahead.

Over and over again she did this. Over and over again Rey sprinted down that hall, her eyes pinned to Ben’s back, and her heart eager to rejoin the only person she ever trusted with it. Over and over again Ben turned to look at her, and again and again she tried to make sense of his expression. At first she thought he was in pain, that this separation was as awful a thing to him as it was to her. But… it was so strange. Nothing about Ben's face changed, but the more he turned to look at her, the more Rey found some new way to read his expression.

Pain. Sorrow. Doubt, confusion. Disbelief, wonder, awe, and hope, hope, _hope._ It was this last look that hurt the worst. It was this last look that caused Rey to chase him down over and over, never getting any closer.

Eventually, failure burned in Rey’s belly like a furnace gnawing at the last bit of wood in the grate. What was she doing _wrong_? How could she fix this?

She stepped through the door once again.

And then, gently, like the quick pass of fingers running through her hair, something stirred in Rey’s memory. A warm whisper curled up in the shell of her ear, and said, _“Either you trust someone, or you don’t. Either you take them at their word, and keep hope alive even when you’re scared, or you don’t. Your choice.”_

_My choice._

Rey came to a sudden stop. Her footsteps echoed in the hall like a steady, solid drumbeat.

Her choice.

Though it cut through every inch of her heart to do it, Rey turned her back on Ben, turned back to face the way she’d come. She clenched her jaw and shut her eyes. _My choice._

 _“I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise.”_ His words slipped across the space between them—but were they a memory? Or was he saying them again, wherever he was?

 _My choice._ And though her heart howled with every step, she retraced her way back up the hall. The trip was much shorter now; perhaps that was her reward for sussing out the riddle, for getting something right.

When she reached the door, it dissolved under her hands, bubbling and melting away like a burned photograph. Rey drew her hand back with a cry and watched as the door dissolved to bone, to ash, and then bloomed into a familiar face. It was her face—herself, as a child, starveling thin with elfin features and a determined, anxious expression.

She knew that look. It was the mask she wore on her face ever since Ben left.

“It’ll be all right,” Rey whispered, hoping her comfort could cross through the years, some way, somehow. And perhaps they already had. Perhaps that was how she had made it to this point of her life at all: the echoes of the woman she was now had reached out and scattered her words across the distance dividing her from her childhood.

“It’ll be all right,” she said again, and every word was like a kiss and a tear and a last, desperate gulp of air. For courage. For luck. For hope, hope, _hope._ “You’ll see. I promise. If there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s waiting.”

Waiting—willfully waiting, waiting with your mind set and your heart devoted—was a far, far different thing from waiting with _want._ This was waiting with a purpose, _the_ purpose, the one cause to which Rey would continue to dedicate herself over and over again. A purpose she had found through Ben, _for_ Ben, _because_ of Ben—but most of all, for herself.

"The future is like water," she said to herself, pressing her heart into every word. "It's shapeless and shifty and changing. But you have to wait. Be patient. To the saints it might be a virtue, but to us, to me, to you, it's a necessity. It's survival. So that's what you and I will do: survive."

Then, too fast, too soon, the dream faded. Rey woke to find a new dawn blooming rosy pink outside her window. When she turned to skim her fingers across Ben's side of the bed, she sat up a cry.

Her photo was gone, and in its place sat a single red rose.

 

The days passed.

The rose slowly began to bloom, standing sentinel in its vase on the windowsill.

And Rey waited patiently for Ben to return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was hopefully less dreamy and weird. i wanted to convey a sort of emotional dreariness/rigidity, now that rey's alone. kinda like trying to feel things through six feet of glass. and i think it might actually be one of my shorter chapters?? who knows anymore
> 
> fwiw, i headcanon'd in this fic that the tico sisters are buddhist, and i researched as well as asked my vietnamese friend about home altars that would be appropriate for honoring deceased family members. so if i fucked up representing that, that's all on me and i apologize.
> 
> i'm hopin to get this finished before this sunday--or at the very least, before *next* saturday (april 7th). so... fingers crossed!! we're in the home stretch :D/


	10. The deathless glow with their own light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion itself was as sudden as a slap. First, Rey was in her bed, curled up under the blankets—and then she was standing in front of Ben, her eyes on his eyes, while he gazed at her mouth.
> 
> “Where are you?” she asked as soon as he came into focus. “How are you?” She blinked. “And why are you all… scruffy?”
> 
> Ben laughed and sheepishly ran his hand around his mouth, scratching his stubble. “I’m not always near a razor or a mirror,” he said. “As for the rest… Too far from you, and as fine as I could be. Considering.” Ben’s throat tightened as he spoke; she watched the apple of it shift with every word. “Master Snoke’s work isn’t easy to find. The man himself might as well be a ghost, but if you want to find your devil, you have to burn him out.”
> 
> Oh, how good it felt to hear his voice! Deep and churning, like a rumble released from the roots of his heart. It filled Rey like a glass eager to hold water—she was a space made for him to fill, and so she savored the sound of him, even if his words were gray and grim.
> 
> “Is that what you’re doing?” she pressed, eager for the truth. “You’re trying to hunt him down, aren’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gently encourage you all to put on [Chelsea Wolfe's "Color of Blood"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJQR6D8NbKI) while listening to this. Not only is that the accompanying song to this chapter, it fits the tone I was trying to create.

It wasn’t long before Rey turned her bathroom into an amateur dark room. She had a second light and accompanying switch installed, so that she could swap between the two bulbs with just a flick of her finger. It was a strange, silly little pleasure, to stand in the doorway on a darkened threshold and watch the lights shift based on that small movement of her hand.

Rey smiled each time that red, deep light flooded the small room. It was so rich, so lurid and alive. Red was, without a doubt, her favorite color: it pulsed with a defiant violence, like a heart, like hope.

Red. The color of love, the color of blood. The color of control, of denial—a color that stopped you in your tracks, barred you from taking one step further. A color of passion and punishment.

" _And red means stop."_

Through trial and error, and after many unfortunate accidents that had her cursing a mile a minute, Rey slowly became much better at developing her own pictures. Her dark room still doubled as a bathroom, and she marveled quietly at the versatility of that sturdy little sink. It was the same place where she washed out Poe’s hair dye (“What’s wrong with a little gray?” “A lot, especially if it started growing in ten years ago”), and she enjoyed watching the dark water run all clear to light.

Sometimes… sometimes Rey could have sworn there was someone in the room with her, peering over her shoulder, keeping a close and careful watch on her progress. Every time she flicked the light switch and the gold bled into red, she could _feel_ someone in there with her, in that small moment when there was no light at all, just darkness. She imagined eyes, rows and rows of them, peering at her from every dark of the dark room. She could even _smell_ this someone in there, too. Her nose flooded with woodsmoke and mint, sandalwood, all scents distinctly masculine, undeniably _Ben_. Even with her eyes shut she could feel him, sense him, know him; his presence was like a burst of warm sunlight after four steady days of rain.

And sometimes, if Rey closed her eyes and held her breath for long enough, she could feel Ben’s lips on her skin, could feel his breath syncing to hers, could hear him whisper, _“Green, yellow, red. Red. Red.”_ _Stop_ the red said. _Stop, wait, watch, listen, learn, learn, learn._ And Rey was. She wanted to, was willing, she _would_.

These hauntings weren’t without purpose. Ben had a lesson to teach her her, even if it was only just a single question. _“Is the camera a means through which you show the world or hold it still?”_

“Neither,” she said to her lover’s presence. “I’m showing the world what _I_ see.”

 

There were times that Rey could have sworn another face was peering back at her from the bathroom mirror. Sightless eyes, all black with not a stain of white across it, as blind and empty as eternity. She didn't think to try looking at the mirror through the Tico sisters’ camera until that very same device slid off the shelf in her closet and nearly cracked her on the head.

 _Here I am_ , the accident seemed to say, as decisive as a stomping foot. _Here I am, now put me to use_.

When Rey finally worked up the courage, however, there was nothing odd about the mirror at all. And certainly nothing strange about her reflection. It was just herself embedded in the glass, her face an emblem of a patient indifference.

This sight was such a normal, unremarkable thing that it was almost a disappointment. And Rey's back was already turned to the mirror before she realized her reflection had not, in fact, been normal at all. There was something missing from the image.

Her reflection wasn't holding a camera.

After a moment's pause, Rey smiled as she turned off the light. Darkness slammed into the room, and took her odd reflection with it.

Something strange, something frightful, something _unusual._ Yes, that was what she craved. That was her normal.

 

Towards the end of summer, on the night of her twenty-first birthday, Rey received yet another surprise. It was the night that Ben finally returned—at least, in her dreams.

Her birthday was mostly a quietly affair. She had no plans to go out to celebrate (drinking lost quite a bit of its shine once you weren’t barred legally from doing it anymore), and she had no interest in a cake. She did sample a piece of her latest Mad Batter creation, however. A Mars dacquoise was too nice _not_ to try. Ms. Holdo had given Rey the whole day off (“Time off still counts as a present,”) and all her friends had treated her to breakfast—and lunch—at the BB-8. Paige stopped by, briefly, with a sly look and a quiet word.

"Senator Organa sends her regards."

"That's a little ominous."

"No, no, I mean—" Paige pulled a card out of her purse and handed it to Rey. "I mean _birthday_ regards, you idiot."

Rey's fingers trembled as she opened the delicate cream colored card. She expected something Hallmark-y and prepared. What she got instead was a handwritten note consisting of three lines: _Paige has told me so much about you that it seemed rude of me not to send my greetings. Happiest of birthdays to you, Miss Doe, and thank you for your efforts with my campaign. And do tell my idiot son to stop by sometime—it would be nice to finally meet you._

"See?" Paige said once Rey was through reading. "Regards."

Rey's hands shook as she carefully tucked the card into her bag. Meeting Ben's mother would be the closest thing she ever came to having her own. She didn't know what to do with such women, how to talk to them, how to act, what to expect. Responsible adults with parental instincts were so far from Rey's experience that she might as well have been asked to tame a lion. "Thank you. Thank her for me, too."

She came back to her apartment that evening with a full stomach, light spirits, and a purse full to bursting with hand-drawn birthday cards to add to the ones already taped to her bedroom mirror. Her last act, before tucking herself in to an early bed, was to cut up her fake I.D. and replace it with her newly arrived real one. Rey gave the chopped-up pieces a hearty salute before slamming the garbage lid on them for good.

In the private corner of Rey’s heart where a thing like regret still lurked, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment that Ben hadn’t been here to share the day with her. His presence alone would be a present enough—but once again, like any other day since May, she had to do without him.

Rey tucked her heavy heart into bed, shut her eyes—and found herself in a dream.

Whatever lesson Rey had learned months ago in the hallways of always when she tried to catch up to Ben, still seemed content to shower her with rewards months after the fact. As if the world and whatever power lay within it was a force of balance and kindness, a deity of small tenderness. Now, instead of an endless yawning corridor, Rey dreamed she was only in one room, lit in the same dark, bleeding reds as her dark room. Everywhere she looked she saw a surface bathed in seething scarlets and dark crimson; it sent a ripple of thrill through her. That was, after all, what red _was_ —the color of love, the color of blood.

The reunion itself was as sudden as a slap. First, Rey was in her bed, curled up under the blankets—and then she was standing in front of Ben, her eyes on his eyes, while he gazed at her mouth.

“Where are you?” she asked as soon as he came into focus. “ _How_ are you?” She blinked. “And why are you all… scruffy?”

Ben laughed and sheepishly ran his hand around his mouth, scratching his stubble. “I’m not always near a razor or a mirror,” he said. “As for the rest… Too far from you, and as fine as I could be. Considering.” Ben’s throat tightened as he spoke; she watched the apple of it shift with every word. “Master Snoke’s work isn’t easy to find. The man himself might as well be a ghost, but if you want to find your devil, you have to burn him out.”

Oh, how _good_ it felt to hear his voice! Deep and churning, like a rumble released from the roots of his heart. It filled Rey like a glass eager to hold water—she was a space made for him to fill, and so she savored the sound of him, even if his words were gray and grim.

“Is that what you’re doing?” she pressed, eager for the truth. “You’re trying to hunt him down, aren’t you?”

Ben hung his head, hiding his face in the shadows of his hair. “I didn’t think it would take so long…” His voice was all penitence and regret. “I wanted to come back home sooner than this.” His mouth shifted, twisted. “I’m missing your birthday.”

Rey covered one of his hands with both of hers. “You still found a way to put in an appearance,” she said. “Which is very much appreciated, I might add.”

Ben gently tugged on their hands, pulling her closer to him. They both bent down to sit on the floor. “I think we can do a little better than _appreciation_ ,” he murmured, all tenderness gone.

Could Rey blush in a dream? Anything was possible, it seemed. But she wouldn’t let herself be distracted—not until she had a satisfying answer. “If you really felt so guilty about it, you could have just called me. Pretty sure you can get near a phone.”

Ben shook his head, his eyes on her lips again. “It’s already pressing me past my limit to be away from you.” He gathered her wrists in one of his hands and held the other against her throat, right over her pulse. “To hear your voice again… I would lose all my nerve.”

Rey hummed quietly as he stroked her skin. His eyes glittered as the vibration moved through his fingers. He hungered for her, for every little sound. “You can hear me right now…”

“I can hear you _here_ ,” he argued in a quiet voice, pressing her hands to his chest. Right over his heart. “I carry you there as well. But that’s all I can manage until this is over.”

Her fingertips grew cold. “I don’t understand.”

Ben gazed at her with eyes so deep and lovely and dark. They seemed to say all that his heart contained but his voice still struggled to translate. “I love you with the whole and heart of me,” he said at last, “but it isn’t enough. Not yet. _I’m_ not enough.”

This wasn’t exactly the conversation Rey expected to have. Especially not on her bloody birthday. Of all nights! “Why would you think that? I’d never—”

Ben held a finger to her lips. “Let me finish. Please.”

She fell silent, flattening her hands over his heart, eager for his warmth.

“I have given so much of myself to darkness and anger—to hurt and fury. I suffered and I bled and I did it over and over again. And I learned to like it. It was, before you, the only love I could understand… I clung to it, needed it. To create. To paint. To control. To feel. But that kind of living… it carves a hole into you. It makes in you a black, blank space that feeds and gnaws, needing _your_ need.”

Ben drew Rey closer to him, cradling her in the sheltering strength of his arms. “I cannot tear myself between the two loves—this darkness, and you. I cannot give you anything less than my all and every, than _me_ , entirely.” He gripped her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “You deserve a man true and whole. Not a boy broken between two names, taking a coward’s shelter beneath them.”

Rey rolled back her shoulders and carefully read every unspoken word in her lover’s eyes. “Ben Solo,” she said, her words and heart and mind all aligned: fearless and loving, livid with it. “Kylo Ren.”

Ben nodded, his thumb gliding over the curve of her chin. “I will beggar myself between the two of you if I keep living like this,” he said. “I can’t be Ben and Ren both, but they both belong to me. So where is the line?”

“So what will you do?” Clearly he had a plan. Rey did not want to think he had left her three months ago without even a goal in mind. Only one of them should be reckless and impulsive, and she'd already decided it would be her.

“Too much of what I made under Snoke’s training is still out there, somewhere. I have to find all those works, every last one. All of the masterpieces brought into this world by the mighty Kylo Ren." he smirked as he said it, and rolled his eyes to show what he thought of  _that._ "I have to find them, tear them apart, make them bleed. And then I have to burn my devil out.”

“So… theft? Vandalism?” Rey leaned forward and inhaled his scent. Smoke and cinders. “Maybe a little arson?”

His lips twitched, but his eyes stayed dark and deep. “Call it what you like. To me it’s nothing short of murder.”

How dramatic. How very like him. She fought back a smile. “Except no one’s actually _dying_ , Ben.”

He stared at her for a beat too long. “Is that how you see it?” he asked. “I was Kylo for far longer than I’ve ever been Ben. And I’ve only been yours for weeks, yet I take to it, to you, like breathing. So no, no one’s _actually dying,_ but there’s still a murder involved. It’s still a death.” Ben eyes slowly flickered around her face, tracing her expression. Whatever he saw there made his eyes glisten with tears. “I’m killing myself to love you, to earn that right—to be the man who _deserves_ to love you.”

Rey listened to this all with the silence of a woman waiting for her god to answer a final, desperate prayer. _I’m killing myself to love you._ That thought didn’t scare her as it, perhaps, ought to have done. She thought of the words _murder_ and _lover_ and found that they fit rather nicely into each other; love was and would always be a tender violence inflicted onto who you cherished above even your own desire to be safe.

As she sat there in dark contemplation, Ben leaned into her, warming his lips against her skin. She shut her eyes with a sigh. Her clothes seemed to dissolve under the heat of his kisses, and soon she was all but bared before him. Her chest, her breasts, her ribs and belly—each part received their lion’s share of caresses and whispered praises.

Ben’s hands fastened themselves to her waist as Rey arched back, her chest pushing up against the heart that kept time under his ribs. “Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“Do you hate me?”

“Of course not.”

He teased her breasts with his tongue and teeth. “Do you understand what I mean when I say that because I love you, I cannot bear to be with you? Not until I am my full and free self, as I have never been?”

Rey held her breath. It was getting harder to concentrate—which was, perhaps, the reason why he was choosing to ask her these things _now._

Ben moaned against her chest. He pulled her onto his lap. “Speak to me. Say something, my only mine.”

She curled her fingers through his hair and pulled his head back. “I understand.” Her voice was as strong as she felt. “I promise. I do.”

“I’ll love you forever,” he hissed, slipping the heat of his words into her skin. "I will, I promise. I do." He slid his hands down her back, and laced his fingers together under her thighs to give her a little boost.

“I’ll love you forever,” Rey said, balancing out the vow.

Their Dark Room curled around them like rose petals folded back into a bud. Every breath they breathed bloomed and bled a dark, dream-steeped red.

“The color of blood,” she said, tasting it on their lips as they traded sharp, wild, wolfish kisses.

“The color of love,” Ben moaned, and there, in the heart of the world born from their love, they began once more the rite of it, together. Together.

In that dark beating red darkness, they seemed to glow with their own light. Ben's lips drew sounds from her own that were like woman for whom air was both precious and punishing. Rey gasped in, in, in, as his mouth dipped lower, lower, then—

“ _There_.”

Ben’s smile teased her most delicate skin, where all her nerves were wildfires. He gave her a single kiss, and drew back, gently hushing her frustrated groan.

Rey watched, teeth bared, as Ben ran his hands down the back of her legs. Her soul trembled under the force he contained in such a touch; he always knew just how to pull at the roots of her. She hissed and shivered as she felt the hurts in her give one final, desperate pang before they fled her body—all those days of waiting, all her wishing and worrying and wondering; all the extra beats of her anxious heart, all those nights she’d twisted her fists into the sheet and tried to imagine Ben there, to have him to hold, to hit, to love, to touch. All these things and more, all the wordless agonies of doubt, were now drawn from her skin like ink into a fountain pen.

If this room, this dream, this dark room shot through with blood reds and shadow, was the beating heart of their love, then it would be the one and only place in all the world where doubts and fear and fury and cruelty and want could be laid to rest without doing any harm.

Ben extracted the darkness from her like a tooth, and gathered it in his long, strong hands. He bent his head, peered up at her from under his dark lashes, and drew the darkness around her wrists. Over and over, across, under. The shadows were silken soft but strong as steel, ensuring she could not escape, but she had never felt so safe.

Even so, even here, in the heart of it all, Ben peered up at her, patient, watchful, loving. “Green?” he asked.

“For the love of god, Ben, _yes_!”

His laughter was like music as he hummed against her skin, gently parting her with his fingers, tasting her with his tongue. He played her body like a Theremin that moaned and wailed one single, endless note, and together they pulled the love from the marrow of their bones and pressed it against the darkness like a blade burning bright.

 

All in all, it was one of Rey’s better birthdays.

" _Better_?"

She smiled against his mouth. "The best."

* * *

 In the glass-calm waters of Rey’s mind, she looked back on the last few months with something close to pride.

Summer was gone in a blur—a blue haze of white noise. And soon September was at Rey’s door, with oak leaves in her hair and the sharp, crisp bite of autumn haunting her every breath. It was Rey’s favorite time of year, this slow descent from summer’s heat and storms and blistering bright sunlight, into the far more agreeable sequence of days best described as _sweater weather._

A new semester began at Hunter, which Rey faced with a little less apprehension than a firing squad. Her poor performance at the end of her first term didn’t horrify her as much anymore, but it was still there, like a shadow hanging over the head of her academic pride. The new term alone wasn’t the only reason why she was nervous. In her first week back, after a long discussion with Finn, and then a short, cursory one with her advisor, Rey changed her entire field of study: psychology major, studio art minor.

She knew that she would be starting back from the most basic of beginnings, but she wasn’t afraid. “The plan,” she said in response to her advisor’s vaguely curious expression, “is to combine the two once I graduate and pursue my master’s—in art therapy.”

_My future. My choice._

Habits turned into hobbies soon gain the crown of mastery, and the fruits of Rey's labors with photography soon bore fruit. After a few experimental photos, she quietly retired the Tico sisters’ instant camera back to her closet shelf. She settled instead on a sensible black Canon, which sat in her hands with a sturdy righteousness. And she easily fell into the comforts of taking pictures where she went, just as long as she remembered her motto: _pictures are a way to keep hold of the broken things_.

Time was ruthless, not merciless. Ruthless simply meant that your eyes found a goal and your steps did not waver from its progress. And this was how time passed for her—steadily, beat by beat, with no concern for grief or fear or love or hope. Time would do what it was made to do, and Rey’s photography would do what she _wanted_ it to: strip pieces of time down to their essential elements and freeze them, love them, keep them safe.

Photography, and Rey’s growing skill at it, lingered somewhere between a talent and a discipline. Art was, after all, an emotional release as well as a means to a paycheck. Eventually. And so she made sure to take a picture of whatever caught her eye and what her eye seemed to slide over. Slightly askew angles of empty escalators and platforms in Atlantic Terminal, in that terrifying liminal space right before early morning rush hour; a tilted perspective highlighting a too dark corner of a flower shop, a small sphere of shadow that reminded her of how there were some places where the light could never reach; cracks in the sidewalk, flickering light bulbs, twisted metal railings—anything and everything that revealed the damage of years and the persistence of life despite it. All the ill-fitting, unwelcome flaws in our day to day periphery that, for whatever reason, we were trained not to see was what Rey captured in her pictures.

She decided early on and immediately never to take a picture of living subjects. No people. No animals. Lives were not and would never be hers to profit from, and it wasn’t life itself that was her focus, but all the minutiae that life was built upon. Because of this, her wallet was always just a little lighter during her artistic outings as she dug out what she could spare to the homeless she came across. More often she’d buy them lunch or coffee, and they’d pass the time with small conversations or chess games while Rey set down dishes of kibble if they had any pets.

This was how she met Ben's uncle, by pure chance.

At first look, the man with the long, graying hair and not-so-carefully trimmed beard appeared to be just another homeless among the many that gathered in Sunset Park. He even took the sandwich and bottled water Rey offered him, and was halfway through it when he turned to her with a smile.

"Do you always feed strangers?"

"If I've got the food to spare."

His eyes were wide and deep, blue like a sea under a cloudless day. But there was something dark in his gaze—not a threat, no, but a sadness that Rey felt in her bones, even if she could not place it.

This is what made her hold out her hand. "I'm Rey."

"Like 'of sunshine?"

She smiled and shrugged. "That's not the worst I've ever heard."

The man glanced at her hand and took it. He had a strong, warm grip. "Well hello, Rey of sunshine. The name's Luke."

"Nice to meet you."

"It is." His tone was like his gaze: measuring, thoughtful.

She gestured to the checkerboard between them. "You play?"

"No, I just like to stare at the pieces and wait for something to move."

"Hmm. Sarcasm." She could handle that. "I could leave you alone if you'd like."

"Tell me something, Rey."

She waited, saying nothing, and promising less.

His lips quirked up at her silence. "You wouldn't happen to work for Senator Organa, would you?"

Rey blinked. That was definitely not what she expected him to say. "I—volunteer for her. Sometimes. Why?"

"Nothing really." He began to rearrange the pieces, giving the red to her, keeping the black for himself. "Just wondering if this was one in a long line of guilt trips." He settled into his seat, peeled the crust off his sandwich, and threw it on the ground. A crow swooped down to eat it with a grateful caw. "We keep tabs on each other like wire taps and private eyes. It's easier than a sit-down dinner."

"So you were expecting me?"

Luke studied her. "Not really. Not _exactly._ Suspecting to expect you, maybe."

"How would you even know who to look for?"

"I don't know how to break this to you, Rey, but your name isn't exactly _common._ "

She pressed her lips into a thin line. "I'm not here for Senator Organa. I come here all the time."

"I've seen you," he said, throwing another chunk of the sandwich to the crow. "So—photography. You're an artist." He said it like a statement, no strings of questions or suggested judgment attached.

She smiled. "I'm trying to be."

"Keep trying, then. See how far that gets you."

She let the silence tick by, and then peeled off the crust from her own sandwich. Another crow joined the first.

"May I ask you something? It's a little personal."

"As long as I reserve the right to ignore it if I want, sure."

"Why... how come you don't keep in touch with your sister?" Was this some sort of family thing? She could see where Ben might have learned it.

"Getting us together—well, it's like herding cats. You ever try to tell a cat what to do?"

Rey shook her head. "I never had a cat. Or any pet."

"No? Huh. Well that's how we are." He glanced down at the board and made the opening move. "The Organa-Skywalker-Solo walking debacle."

"Wait— _Skywalker_?" she echoed, astonished. "You're  _the_ Luke Skywalker?"

"So they tell me."

"I've been reading about you. In class, at school." Rey skirted very gently around the other thing she wanted to say. How Ben had been his patient once, years ago. How Luke had kept the practice open despite their falling out, although he stepped down as director shortly after.

"That's me," he laughed. "Ancient history."

"Hardly. People are still talking about you. You opened the first art therapy clinic in New York."

"I know. I was there." He gestured to the board. "It's your turn."

Rey flicked her piece forward, not bothering to look at it. "That's what I want to do. Art therapy, I mean."

Luke's pale eyes glittered with a familiar light. That, too, seemed a family trait. "Good luck with that. Lemme know how it turns out." His voice was neither harsh nor welcoming. It seemed a tired thing, like a beast with old bones with aches woven through.

They continued their game in silence, refusing to addressing the looming shadow of Ben that hovered in the air between them. When it was over (Luke lost, though Rey had the sneaking suspicion that he had thrown the game in her favor), he stood up and held out his hand for her to shake.

"You take care," he said, with as much feeling as he could put into the words. "And you tell my nephew to be good to his mother."

The words burst from Rey's mouth before she could stop them. "Ben's gone. I haven't seen him in months."

"That sounds familiar," he said. His laughter was dry and withered, but he cut it off quickly at the look on Rey's face. When he spoke again, it was with a hesitant tenderness. As if he had forgotten how to be kind but wanted very much to try again. "Well... if I see him before you do, I'll tell him to be good to you, too."

"And if I see him first?"

Luke held her hand a little tighter. Like a drowning man grasping for air. "Then tell him I'm sorry. He'll know what it means."

Rey nodded. She knew, too.

He let go of Rey's hand. "And tell Leia not to do anything too crazy to her hair."

* * *

 

As September slowly stepped across the stage made by each blank square on the calendar’s space, Rey’s little pile of victories became an embarrassment of riches. She saw herself as a woman reborn, with a renewed passion for her work, her life, her future— _any_ future—that flared like an ember gently coaxed back into flame.

For the first time in Rey’s life, she felt as if she were _living_ in it, instead of waiting for a reason for it to begin. No longer was her greatest wish for the arrival of some errant parents, with pleas for forgiveness and declarations of love on their lips. No longer did Rey hope for the world to take her aside and issue an apology for making her an orphan; no longer did she expect to receive a carefully prepared written statement of contrition. She did not wait in hope for the day to be told that there had all been some mistake, and that she had two loving parents who were wild with the thought of seeing her again.

Her parents were gone—gone and probably dead. And they would never want her back.

Gone as well was her fierce ambition to be all that Ben could need. Everyone, even lovers, could and should only need themselves. To love was not to be the pivot around which your beloved must dip and hinge and twist. You were their balance, their counter step.

This was the harder lesson to learn. Rey had never fallen in love before. Wanting to be loved and falling in it were two entirely different seas to sail. But there was always some small knot in the core of her, some little thread she could not untangle each time she thought about what it must mean to share your life with another, to walk at the hip so that when you fell you’d fall together. She clung to Ben as fiercely as she had both for himself—his wild, weary eyes and tender heart and a wolfish, starved passion that matched her own—and half for her. So she could have someone to love, someone that was hers and hers alone—and so she could be his as well.

Ben’s absence, then, was a blessing to them both. Because in her heart of hearts, Rey knew she had not lost a shred of her desire and devotion to him. She had merely broadened her focus to be just as dedicated to herself. Gone were all her wishes to have someone to belong to, but the _want_ to wish had not abandoned her, not entirely. Rather, it had transformed.

If the impossible were miracles and miracles were magic, and magic had a price, then Rey would match it. _Match_ it, not pay it. She would offer it a trade: her will for its want Because what, after all, was an artist if not a person who looked at the world and found a way to weave her will through the gaps? And how, in truth, was an artist, a lover, any different from the other? All art and love ever was—no matter the medium of expression or purpose behind it—was an eye and a mouth opening upon the world, giving voice to all in its sight. Lovers just had the advantage of giving that focus a kiss.

Ben had understood this long before Rey did. It remained perhaps one of the few examples of Snoke's lessons that were worth remembering, not in spite of its damage but because of its wisdom: Create what you see—whatever that may be.

And it was here, in this moment, with this discovery that Rey understood at last what had shaken her so badly about Ben's painting, the one in his East Hampton studio. _What the pupil sees._  It was the vision of a man so eager for love that it bled through his work. The vision of a man who had the wrong truths beaten into him, a study of pain as power and control instead of as a consequence of feeling at all.

For as long as Rey lived, and perhaps even beyond that still, she would never forgive the man responsible for it all.

Perhaps this was why, on October 1st, Rey woke up to the stench of smoke and the call of sirens. Dark clouds flooded like a miasma through her apartment, and she threw herself on the floor, choking, sputtering, trying desperately to remember the layout of her room. As tears burned in her eyes, she crawled her way to her most important items: her purse, her camera, Ben’s rose. She didn’t even put on a pair of shoes.

Rey scrambled out of the window onto the rusted fire escape. The metal flaked off like dried blood in her hands, leaving smears on her heels. Like Cinderella’s bloodiest escape.

She made it to the pavement within seconds, but it wasn’t enough. She had to keep going, to get away. There was only safety in distance. Only when she reached the corner of her street did she finally stop and turn around to assess the damage, to see what remained.

Black smoke as thick as hellfire billowed out of the first two windows on the second floor of her apartment building. _Ben's room._ Rey watched, wide eyed with horror, as the shifting swirls of fire and thick, onyx plumes gave shape to a familiar sight. It was a man’s face, misshapen, twisted. The longer Rey looked upon it, the more it seethed with hideous, beastly bitterness. And then the shadows bent, and the face was looking at _her_. It rippled with dark ecstasy, becoming a glee as vicious as a viper victorious.

As Rey stared into the simulacrum of Snoke’s wasted, withered face, she crossed her heart, spat on the pavement, and worked her will into a wish. “May Kylo Ren burn the heart out of you. And from your ashes may Ben Solo arise anew.”

Rey stomped her foot on her black, phlegm-wet spittle, grinding her hateful hex into the earth. “You cannot have him. You will never have me. And through the force of blood, through the force of love, your life will pay our cost.”


	11. THE ABYSS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey stared at him closely. This shadow, this man, even with his mask, was as familiar to Rey as the child he clutched tight. She’d been walking in the darkness of him for months, had been loving and learning the heart of him in every waking moment and wandering dream.
> 
> “Kylo Ren,” she breathed, her eyes fixed to the mask where the man’s face ought to be. His gaze was obscured by a blindfold made of hard black metal, framed and filigreed with pale silver. Like stars.
> 
> Rey continued. “Kylo, I know you. I love Ben as you do. So would you do us both a kindness?” She paused. “Please?”
> 
> Silence. She held her breath, waiting, hoping.
> 
> Kylo’s voice, when it came, was a mechanical rasp. “What would you have of me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In these last few chapters, perhaps now more than ever, their corresponding tracks are of the utmost tone-setting importance. On that note, here's Chelsea Wolfe's ["The Abyss."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ormwe3Gnwno)

> Watch your thoughts in the dark  
>  They’ll drag you down to the deep blue sea  
>  Stare it down, the abyss  
>  Run away, run away from it  
>  Snuff it out at the wick  
>  Run away, run away from it  
>  With broken hearts, how could we fear  
>  Anything for a thousand years  
>  When I move it pulls me closer  
>  When I swim it drags me under  
>  When I dream it steals my wonder  
>  Set me free from my slumber  
>  Stare it down, the abyss  
>  Run away, run away from it  
>  It hurts to love when i remember  
>  We were born unto chaos  
>  When I move it pulls me closer  
>  When I swim it drags me under  
>  When I dream it steals my wonder  
>  Then sets me free from my slumber

\-- Chelsea Wolfe, _The Abyss_

 

* * *

 

“You don’t mind crashing on the couch for a bit, right?” Rose’s hands twisted as she spoke, matching her tense tone. “I know there’s not much room—”

Rey took a breath, hoping her friend followed suit. “Rose. You're saving my life here. I’d take the damn floor if I had to.”

“Well… good, because that couch is old as hell. After a few minutes, you’ll feel like you  _are_ on the floor.” She paused. "Face down. With a brick on your back."

“I _really_ don’t mind,” Rey said, and she gave the cushions a pat just to prove that she meant it. “And it’s only for a week. I can take seven days of mild inconvenience.”

“You got lucky,” Rose said. “Can’t say the same for whoever lost their place, though. Do you know how the fire got started?”

Rey smoothed the cushion with her hand and watched the creases even out. She didn’t know how to answer that—with the uneasy truth, or with a comforting lie? There was so much of the mysteries of her life, especially when it involved Ben, that she didn't quite feel comfortable revealing to her friends. The oddities were a world shared between her and Ben alone.

After a moment, Rose took the hint and nodded. “Right, well… make yourself at home. My house, your house, y’know the deal.” She snatched up her coat and purse. “I’m going to be out pretty late tonight. All hands-on deck down at HQ.”

The word jarred Rey from her trance. She laughed, not unkindly. “ _What_?” she asked, her accent sharpening around the word.

Rose grinned at her as she looped her scarf around her neck. “Hey, that’s Leia’s word, not mine.”

Rey watched her friend gather up her keys and do a round of checks, making sure she had everything she needed. “How late are you going to be?” Rey asked.

“Not sure. The election’s in three weeks so we’re all hauling ass as much as we can. I don’t think Paige has been home all week; she just crashes on the softest surface she can find.” Rose sighed, offered Rey a shrug, and turned to leave. "I'll lock you in so no one steals you!"

"Thanks...?"

Rey listened to the silence Rose left behind. It sounded off to her ears. She could never get used to the silence of another person’s house when she was the only one in it. It felt as if the walls knew her for a trespasser and denied her any comfort. It reminded her too much of being in foster homes.

When Rey could stand the silence no longer, she snatched up the remote and turned the TV on. A news channel, naturally. Paige might be the one with the political science degree and active internship, but Rose was just as committed to the cause her sister believed in. It would make sense that she’d be glued to every chyron crawl and blaring headline—at least until election day.

Rey settled against the couch as the TV flared to life, illuminating a woman’s head with a stern, stoic expression. A little gray box slid into view next to her, emblazoned with the words _FIRE IN LOFT 444_.

“A fire broke out in an art gallery in Soho yesterday," the anchorwoman said. "The gallery was one of many owned by New York’s own world-renowned artist, the notoriously reclusive Snoke. Snoke surprised many by establishing a private art retreat on Shelter Island in the 1990s, though he hasn’t been seen in public following allegations of child endangerment and physical abuse from some of his former students.”

Rey gasped. A short archived video began to play, revealing two familiar faces. _Hux and Phasma._ They were older in the video than they’d been when she saw them in Ben’s memory, but there was no mistaking their hard eyes and mask-like faces. The trademark armor of all who came close to Snoke.

The archived video disappeared as a soundless clip of the fire began to play out on screen. The voice over continued. “The blaze started in Loft 444 last night at around 11:30 PM, where it quickly engulfed the entire building, destroying all of the artwork inside. Firefighters who responded to the scene managed to prevent damage to the nearby buildings, but the Loft itself could not be saved.”

Rey leaned forward in her seat, her eyes tearing across the scene. Nothing materialized in the smoke, but the camera moved too fast for her to be sure. Only one thing was terrifyingly clear: the fire happened at exactly the same time as Ben's apartment burned.

“Eye witness reports claim a man was seen entering the gallery before the fire started, but authorities could not verify this at this time. No deaths were reported in the incident, yet an insider to Channel 7 News has informed us that several mummified remains were found in the Loft’s wreckage.” The anchorwoman paused briefly to let this sink in. “A spokesperson for Snoke could not be reached for comment at this time.”

Rey jabbed her thumb against the remote. The TV clicked off, revealing a blank space where her expression peered back at her like a haunting.

Ben's words echoed loudly in her head. “I _have to burn my devil out.”_

Rey’s heart was a hammer, her every breath a nail clawing and scraping along her throat. She fumbled for her phone and struggled to unlock it. On the third attempt, she gave up all hope at being able to type and instead held her phone up to her lips. “Okay, Google. Snoke. Art galleries. Fire. 2018.”

There were only a few relevant results, most of them blocked behind the paywalls of local newspapers. But Rey saw enough to make her blood run cold. San Jose. Boston. Toronto. London. Snoke had galleries in all of these places—Umbra., Pickman, Nova, Viy—and now Manhattan’s Loft 444. All of them burned, all within the past five months, starting in May.

Questions burst into Rey’s thoughts at once, demanding her attention. Why hadn’t Ben started with Loft 444 in the first place? Why save the closest place for last?

She shook her head. Ben wasn’t just trying to hunt down Snoke. That much was clear. The news of the fire simply added in to what Rey already knew: he was trying to chase down every part of himself that was still bound to his master, every bit of art, every painting he had pored his heart and life and likely his own blood into. All of it had to die. And maybe these galleries, in this order, had some significance that Rey could not see.

She leaned back on the couch and shut her eyes. Did it matter? _Should_ it matter? Wasn’t it enough to know that Ben was getting close to her, and that he may, in fact, return once things settled down?

Rey shook her head. “Come back to me, Ben. And make it soon.”

As she spoke, all the noise seemed to drop out of Rose’s apartment, leaving Rey with the low thrum of her own heart and a quiet, sinuous hiss. It was coming from somewhere close to the floor.

She turned slowly, trying to find the sound.

She gazed down at the ground.

The sound was coming from her bag.

Rey carefully separated the contents of the duffel bag, tracking the sound to its source: her small notebook, the one she had once kept as a diary. Inside was every photo she had taken with the instant camera, few though they were. They just felt too strange and significant to put in any regular photo album, a hunch that as now proven woefully true: the hisses and wordless whispers were coming from these photos.

Holding her breath, Rey carefully unpeeled the three photographs and laid them out on the coffee table, one by one. The first photo was an empty stairwell in Atlantic Terminal, leading to an empty, abandoned platform in the witching hour right before rush hour traffic. Trains sat waiting on the parallel opposing tracks, their doors open, benches bare. A ripple of goosebumps slid down Rey’s arms as she looked at them. An empty train in New York was as unnatural as a creaking step in a house where only one person was at home.

The second photo was of Ben’s apartment the morning after he had visited for Rey’s birthday. She had stood in the hallway leading back to his bedroom, the very same one she’d walked down the first time she’d entered his apartment, answering his silent screams. On the floor was stretched the strangest of shadows: it almost seemed to dissolve on the surface, shimmering into a long, wide shape, like a figure in a cloak, mask, and tightly drawn hood.

The final photo that was making noise was the first picture Rey took of herself with the instant camera. Just her, alone, her face bright against the darkness.

All these photos only had one thing in common: darkness and light were featured heavily in both.

The longer Rey looked at the photographs, the more sound seemed to return to the apartment. It swelled in her ears, roaring and receding like waves lapping at the shore. Bit by bit, Rey felt herself slipping somewhere deep and lonely and dark within herself, as if she had entered the mind's abyss.

The pull was like metal on a magnet, like a back arching to meet a warm hand. The pull was as natural as blinking, and Rey’s vision blurred like a projector stuttering as it caught on a film reel. She bent forward, keeping her eyes pinned to the first picture—and she kept moving, further in, farther—falling faster, deeper—

And the abyss opened its arms, and welcomed Rey home like a long lost daughter.

 

Rey’s feet brought her forward before she knew she wanted to walk. Her footsteps were loud, decisive. _I’m here_ , they seemed to say. _I will remain here. I belong._

She crossed the dividing line between the platform and the train car in one long, ghostly stride. The train shivered around her, its excitement rippling in the air, sending sister shockwaves across her skin. _Here!_ It seemed to cry, leaping like how koi can break the surface of a pond. _Here! Home! Here! Stay!_

The train car was lit up by the ropes of fireflies and cicadas, the latter encased in glittering carapaces whose shine matched that of Yuletime tinsel. The fireflies glowed contentedly with their own light, their wind-chime wings fluttering gently.

 _Welcome,_ each beat of their wing said. _Mother, muse, honored guest. Be welcome._

Rey arched a brow and held out her hand so that one of the illuminating insects might approach. None did, and the train, like a beast taught to sense its passengers’ needs, sprang forward in sympathy with Rey’s restlessness. She could feel the train fix its talons to the tracks as it split its belly open on the third rail, devouring a feast of sparks.

And onward they went into darkness.

Rey looked around. There was nothing and no one else in the car with her, but through the windows of the doors ahead, she could see row after row of occupants, all of them swaying in their seats or grasping noose-like ceiling straps. Rey marched ahead, aware of the dangerous unknown and eager to meet it.

As she stepped into the new train car, a brown and black gloved hand slapped her on the wrist. She stared at the glove, then at the attached arm, and then up to the face of the person to whom they both belonged.

The body was a human’s shape, but every inch of its skin was a wide expanse of photo negatives. Sleek tea brown reams of film with parallel perforations spun and whirred across its neck and face, and its open eyes were wide, blinding white—like a light meant to shine a film reel’s contents to life.

“Tttttttttticketsssssssss,” it said, ignoring Rey’s stare. Or perhaps it was used to being stared at. Its voice was the clap-clatter loop of a film fed into the projector.

Rey took a closer look. It _looked_ like a train conductor—its uniform certainly matched that of the ones working for the LIRR—but the garb was also sewn into the exquisite tuxedo of an orchestra’s maestro. Its baton was a hole puncher, the kind used to punch tickets, and with each move made by the hand holding it, the train seemed to burst into metallic raptures.

“I don’t have a ticket,” Rey said, looking into the conductor’s too-bright eyes. “I’m a guest here. Just ask the lights.”

The nearby passengers turned to stare at Rey. They were all of them film reels as well, their faces vague and blurred, like smoke stretching across the room after the candle sputtered out. Overhead, every firefly and cicada beat their slick, translucent wings in rapid unison. _By the will and words of Hotaru and Utsusemi Concern, we name this passenger our Mother and Muse!_

The conductor clicked its jaw pensively, like a spool with no more film to show. _Ki-clunk, ki-clunk, ki-clunk._ Then, “What’s your destination?”

“What are my options?”

The conductor swelled up like a balloon and turned to face the flat, blank wall behind him. Onto the metal surface he projected a familiar sepia image. “Trufflescar Square, and onward east to the St. Francis Children's Home.”

Rey shivered. “No,” she said at once. Not there. Never back there. Then, she paused. She looked at the image closely. “Don’t you mean Trafalgar?”

“I mean what I say and never any less!” the conductor replied. “And _you_ got the name wrong first. It’s been recorded.”

 _By who_? “I was six!” Rey didn’t like the accusation in its tone.

“That has been noted, too.” The image on the wall changed. “Second choice: Shelter Island. The Purpose, three dates: 1998, 2000, 2004.”

 _Snoke’s manor._ It took all of Rey’s will to shake her head. Ben’s past was his own territory. She would not intrude on such scarred, sacred ground any more than she already had. “No,” she whispered, though it broke her heart to say it.

The conductor sighed like the rustle of pages with stop-motion doodles scrawled in their corners. “There’s just the one left,” it grumbled, and shifted reels to that last image: a road at night, a narrow curve. Something cold slid into Rey’s heart and froze it at the roots. “Destination by default, please hold out your hand.”

“For what?”

“Your visitor’s pass.” The conductor took Rey’s left hand and tied a small red string around her wrist. The bow was delicate, its loops fluttering slowly like a butterfly’s wings.

“Next stop, Reyslip!” It yelled, stomping its shiny black shoes on the floor.

The train reared back with a roar, engines neighing in a shriek of iron and ion. Rey stumbled against the nearest bench, all but falling into the lap of a nearby passenger. It helped her back to her feet with a motherly click of its film reel jaw.

“Don’t you mean Islip?" Rey asked the conductor.

“What have I said about meaning what I say?” it demanded. “Islip is on the Other train. We don’t deal with the Overground here in Under.” The conductor shut one of its bright eyes and glared at her with all the cold severity of the moon. “Some honored guest you are, eh?”

Before Rey could respond, a cloud of cicadas buzzed down from the ceiling, whirling like angry thoughts around the conductor’s head. It swatted a few of them from the air, but even this could not deter them. They continued their assault in Rey’s defense, shrieking like rusty hinges and clattering keys.

“What’s in Reyslip?” she asked, stepping in to capture a few of the cicadas in her hands. Enough was enough. The conductor was just doing its job. Who cared how unfriendly it was?

“ _You_ were,” the conductor said, straightening its hat. “And you will be soon. A misstep of happenstance made by an absence of other decisions. Like a slip, see? Graceless, unintended. And you’re the cause. Ergo, Reyslip.”

That did very little to answer her question. It only spawned another: “But where _is_ it?” she asked, returning the cicadas to the ceiling.

“In a springtime of devil’s smiles, when the weather is a trio of winter chills reviving, ice-encased rain, and a wan, cheerful blue sky grinning at the world through tepid sunshine. A day that led to a night as unpredictable, inconsolable, and unsettled—”

“I meant _where_ as in a place,” Rey cut in. Her head was starting to hurt.

“At midnight,” the conductor said, “in the bend of a hairpin curve, on a road bearing blood and broken glass.”

Rey’s heart clenched like a fist. _Oh no._

The conductor continued. “There lies a man with his teeth in his throat and his eyes clutching the darkness between the stars. He sees the light better that way, sees how it persists. It's so delicate, and this tenderness calls his blood in a cry for violence.”

 _No, no, no._ “Stop it. Stop. I won’t go, no. Not to him, not—”

“You _will_ go because you _are_ going because you _have_ gone!” the conductor howled. “You have long since crossed the third rail into a terrain beyond terra firma, into _Lux Errare_ —where the light loses its way. You have seen it because you saw it because you _will_ see it.” The conductor laughed in the face of Rey's confusion. “What, did you think all the abyss had for you was stolen kisses and warm sighs and the deep, beating heart of darkness? Did you think it wouldn’t ask anything more of you—that you wouldn’t be granted such gifts because you had already offered up so much first? You have done—are doing, _will_ do—something impossible. Is it any wonder that the impossible would then do something for you?”

As they spoke—or rather, as Rey listened to words she rather would not hear at all—the train glided gently to a halt. Its doors opened with a penitent sigh, asking forgiveness, not permission.

“Destination status: imminent,” the conductor said, shuffling Rey towards the open doors. The other passengers hung their heads, burying their eyes in their sleeves. “And there the snake in your lover’s heart lies still, but never forevermore. Remember: he is the master and maker of silent suffering. Show no mercy—or not. Your choice. And as always, when it’s dark, make sure you look for stars.”

The conductor pointed to the open door and gave Rey one final shove. She had no choice but to walk forward.

As her feet touched the platform, the scene dissolved like ink in water. She knew exactly where she was: Ben’s apartment. More specifically, the hallway in the photograph leading back to his room. The rest of the flat was missing, however. Only the hallway existed, unmoored from time and space, like an outpost or a train station platform bridging between abyss and eternity.

Rey looked down. There was a shadow at her feet that loomed long and wide. It growled at the sight of her, a welcome wrapped in a warning. She knew this darkness, the strength and fury of it. Her eyes followed it back to the bedroom, where the shadow was the thickets. It sat hunched around a small, pale figure. Rey could see a mop of wavy black hair framing a long face, with features that were just a bit too striking to blend with the rest. This boy’s face had no balance; there was always some part that stuck out enough to catch a watchful eye. That only made her heart swell with love all the more.

With a small smile, Rey crouched down and held out her hand.

The masked shadow growled again at her, scooping young Ben into his arms and wrapping him tightly in the folds of his cloak.

Rey stared at him closely. This shadow, this man, even with his mask, was as familiar to Rey as the child he clutched tight. She’d been walking in the darkness of him for months, had been loving and learning the heart of him in every waking moment and wandering dream.

“Kylo Ren,” she breathed, her eyes fixed to the mask where the man’s face ought to be. His gaze was obscured by a blindfold made of hard black metal, framed and filigreed with pale silver. _Like stars._

_“And as always, when it’s dark, make sure you look for stars.”_

Rey continued. “Kylo, I know you. I love Ben as you do. So would you do us both a kindness?” She paused. “Please?”

Silence. She held her breath, waiting, hoping.

Kylo’s voice, when it came, was a mechanical rasp. “What would you have of me?"

Rey’s sigh was lost in the old record hiss of Kylo’s breath. She held out her hands, her fingers framing his cloaked face. “There’s no malice in mercy,” she said, digging the words up from her memory. “And there is a killing grace in kindness. Ben told me in August that there had to be a murder, the kind where no one had to die. I know what he means now.”

Kylo said nothing. He did not move any closer, though his broad shoulders hunched up, defensive, alert.

“Please.” Had anyone ever used those words with Ben? Had anyone ever asked anything of Kylo with this voice, this tenderness—giving him the choice of a chance to say no? “Let me help. Let me be the one to do it.”

For a long while, Kylo did not respond. Rey could hear Ben stir restlessly beneath the folds of Ren’s cloak, scratching his long hands at the darkness. And then, Kylo leaned closer to Rey, bowing his head to that the mask fit into the blank, black space between her hands.

She shivered. All at once, the darkness that formed the breadth and bone of Kylo Ren found a home in her, bleeding into and through her every vein and nerve, meeting her marrow with a kiss. And little by little, the mask shattered, revealing a blur of unsettled space where Kylo’s face ought to be.

“For you,” Kylo said, in a voice as tender as any of Ben’s loving whispers. He tilted his hazy face into Rey’s hands so that she could feel the tears upon his cheek. “For you alone I bare my heart.”

Crowned in Kylo's darkness, sealed into the whole and heart of what sheltered Ben for years, Rey gasped as a sightless force wrapped itself around her. She slid her fingers across her face and cheeks. She skimmed her chin and jaw, then up to her trembling eyelids. She felt Kylo’s mask—darkness, studded with stars—meld itself to her like a second skin. She took a breath, filling the small gaps and uneven spaces with her air, her breath, her _self_.

When Rey opened her eyes again, it was just as the conductor said. She was somewhere else entirely. Midnight, in the bend of a hairpin curve, on a road bearing blood and broken glass. The visitor’s pass bracelet fluttered its wings gently against her wrist, drawing Rey closer to the wreckage of bent metal and twist plastic.

She reached out, down, then _in_ , seizing bone and blood, the broken stubs of teeth. She closed them in the limp palm of Snoke’s flat, open hand, and bent over his shattered face, her hair sliding like fingers across his openly weeping wounds.

“Remember this,” she said. “I showed you mercy. I did you a kindness. Do not let this lesson go to waste.”

 

There are some men so brutally battered by their own deep, lonely dark that they learn only how to shape wounds into weapons. In time, they twist others to this purpose.

Snoke was such a man. All words are wasted on him—and yet still they must be said.

There are some rare souls who are also pressed hard under the heel of life, their hearts and hopes split and smeared on the pavement. Souls who, through pain and grief, bleed into the abyss of their minds and have it weep thus back into them. Such souls come out all the stronger from this transposition—they are braver, gentle, softly resilient.

Rey was like this. And Ben, too—the Ben she loved, the Ben he knew he could and should be, born from the boy kept safe under Kylo Ren’s mask and shroud. Such souls must always speak to the worst among them, even if only once, even if only to say, “Forever will you rot in the ruin you made. Die mad about it.”

But Rey’s heart was a hardened, hopeful thing, the best weapon in her arsenal. And so she gave Snoke a lesson, the malice of mercy, the killing grace of kindness. A chance for a choice. What Snoke learned from it— _if_ he learned aught at all—is not for us to know. His was a bitter heart, stubborn as sin and stone, caring only to heed what already matched his belief.

Words are wasted on such men as him—and so we shall say no more than this.

 

It is always just as easy to enter the abyss as it is to leave it. The trouble is never in the travel, but in the aftermath. The settling in.

The pictures Rey had set out on Rose’s coffee table were little more than ruins now. Burns blistered through their centers like perfect spheres, like suns wearing smoldering corona-halos. She carefully gathered them up one by one and slid them into her bag, where they fell into place against Senator Organa’s birthday regards.

The couch groaned as Rey stretched out on the cushions. She spent the next few minutes trying to get comfortable—hard to do with a mind buzzing wild like a hornet.

What had she done?

What did she _do_?

What had she set in motion—and where, _when_ , and how was Ben?

Rey curled her legs up to her chest and held them tight, but her eyes stayed open, wide, watchful, waiting.

Waiting.

Her phone rang, again and again. She ignored it each time. Then it began to chirp with a string of texts. She ignored those too, afraid of what she might see, afraid of what she would learn and how hard the fist of grief would press its knuckles to her ribs. It was already pummeling her in time with every heartbeat. She wasn't sure she could take any more than that.

When her tears came, they were soundless, each drop slipping into shadow, into silence.

What had she done?

What did she _do_?

 _Where's Ben_?

Rey did not hear the knock on Rose’s front door, nor the key stumble as it tried to fit into the lock. She did not hear the door open, nor did she count the steps that followed—four pairs of two: long strides, slow and serene like a regal march; two others that were heavy and hurried, and the last, light and quick. Rey heard none of these things, but she was prepared to greet the visitors all the same.

The person leading the group was an older woman with faded brown hair shot through with gray. Rose was on her left side, an anxious expression stamped across her small face. Two bodyguards flanked the woman on the right.

Rey’s gaze returned to the older woman. She was already something of an acquaintance—Rey had seen her in photos and fliers, in ads flanked with stars and the American flag, but that wasn’t what held Rey’s attention. The woman’s eyes were so painfully familiar—they were the exact same shade of Ben’s, deep and dark, as brown as the rain-drunk earth.

Senator Leia Organa wasted no time on greetings. “Halloween’s coming up in a few weeks,” she said. “Any plans on what you want to be?”

Rey blinked. “Er—what?”

Senator Organa continued. “How about a character witness? It would go great with what Ben’s got planned: arson in the fifth degree, criminal mischief in the fourth.”

“What?!” Rey tried to stand up, but her legs rejected the command. She stared into Leia’s eyes, hoping the other woman would laugh, or wink, or do _something_ to admit this was all a lie and a lark.

But Leia did no such thing.

The floor seemed to sink away from Rey’s feet. She clung to the couch, digging her nails into the fabric. “What do I have to do?” she asked, choking on her tears.

A light glinted in Leia’s eyes. “Huh. I like you. You don’t argue, you don’t complain—you take me at my word. Teach some of that to my son, would you?” Leia rolled her eyes. “He was so sure you’d go and make a fuss about this. _‘She loves me too much to lie, Mother—she said so herself’_.” Her mouth slid into a crooked smile, belying the obvious fondness she had for her son. “As if you'd have to. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him, but I won’t pass up the chance to embarrass you. You’re as good as a daughter-in-law by now.”

Before Rey could cut in, Leia continued, her smile broadening into a grin.

“Lying _to_ is different than lying _for,_ and since _two_ and _four_ is _six,_ and sex is what you get for lying… on? With? Ben, well… who better than you to speak in his defense?” Leia shrugged, and then used the gesture to hold out a hand. “And don’t give me any of the details about my math. I don’t need to know position specifics. I just need you to answer my question.”

Rey stared at the senator, her mouth opened into a wide _o_ of shock. What _was_ it with this family? Was speaking in looping little riddles genetic?

Leia raised an eyebrow. “Well?” she asked.

Rey cleared her throat, scattering her tears and her doubts as far as she could cast them. She only had two things to say. The first came easy: “Is Ben all right?”

“He’s alive and well and where I last left him—which is a nice change of pace.” Leia’s eyes softened for a moment, revealing the mother under the politician’s carefully crafted mask. “And I know I owe you a thank you or two, but we don’t have the time for it now. And you don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to, Rey. I’m not here to force your hand.”

 _Forced_ was far and away from what Rey felt. Fierce, yes. Ferocious, true. And… _filled_ —with purpose, with love, with a calm, ruthless patience.

The final thing Rey had to say was this: “I’m glad I finally got to meet you, Senator. Too bad it’s not… you know. Under less dramatically dire circumstances.”

Leia laughed. “Dramatic and dire are close friends of the family, kiddo. Stick around long enough and you’ll see.”

Rey smiled. She was counting on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a few things.
> 
> Umbra = Darkness  
> Pickman = taken from "Pickman Gallery," a Lovecraft reference  
> Viy = inspired by [a horror novella of the same name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viy_\(story\)), written by Nikolai Gogol.
> 
> All of these seemed appropriately spoopy for Snoke's gallery names.
> 
> The LIRR = Long Island Rail Road. Pronounced "L.I.R.R."
> 
> Hotaru and Utsusemi are Japanese for "firefly" and "cicada," respectively.
> 
> Reyslip is taking from Ruislip ("Ryslip"), which is the town where Andy Serkis (who plays Snoke) was born. Islip is a town on Long Island with a strangely similar name--and I was born in Islip, heh. I picked all this by total chance: it started with me looking up stuff about Serkis, seeing the name of his birthplace, seeing how it was pronounced and going, "Hey, I can use that."
> 
> Lux Errare is probably a bad translation. I was thinking of Chrono Cross's "Angelus Errare - Where Angels Lose Their Way," and just wanted to use that. But since angels have no place in this story, I substituted it with Lux/Light.
> 
> In the margins of my notes for the past four chapters, I kept yelling: "YOU HAVE TO INCLUDE LEIA, WTF, WRITE LEIA." So, here. A long chapter so I could include Leia XD
> 
> "devil's smiles" is an actual way to describe springtime weather that is unpredictable and constantly changing.
> 
> Thank you for enduring yet another heavily surreal chapter. It'll probably be the last of this bizarre nightmarish kind before the end of the fic (though don't hold me to that).
> 
> In this chapter, as in some of the others, the parts where the narration takes on a second person pronoun or even a plural isn't meant to be me, per se--I see it as the Force talking.
> 
> Remember when Snoke told Ben he heard a girl speak to him on the night of his accident? Well, that was Rey. It's always been Rey. No, this fic isn't suddenly about time travel (as much as I like it, it makes my head hurt). It's more about... loops, fulfilling destinies, recognizing the pattern of something you've already done.
> 
> I really wanted to play with the idea of Snoke having a chance, once upon a time, to take a different path, to learn from pain instead of learn to *inflict* pain--and obviously failing to do it. And I really liked the idea of Rey being the one to witness that moment, to see him at his lowest and know that there was never any hope for him (unlike Ben). She hates Snoke, and hates what he's done to Ben, so when presented with the choice, she will confront him however she can. So the "murder where nobody dies" bit is a metaphor for Snoke being the one to slaughter any chance he had to change long before that chance could even form.
> 
> I *personally* choose to blame Snoke entirely for what he is. I don't think Rey had a hand in creating him as a monster at all, nor was that my goal in writing this. I want to clear that up in case that's what any of you took from this chapter. Rey was just there to witness his becoming. This is why she has such an instant revulsion for him: he never struggled with his darkness like Ben did, and it's the struggle to heal/be good that matters more than thinking that you're good.


	12. near my love again, near my love again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey’s heart ached at the thought of all those days they had spent apart, and all they had learned from that distance. The space between them had not been space at all, not really, but the weavework of strings and tethers, the pattern of two hearts bound by a phantom thread.
> 
> Yet still, even after all this time… Rey could not bring herself to move.
> 
> It was Ben, in the end, who opened the door. It was Ben who crossed the threshold dividing them and bent to fold Rey in his arms. It was Ben who whispered words of welcome in her ear, as if she had been the one gone for half the year, carving a path of destructive absolution through galleries that were palaces to pain and cruelty.
> 
> “Rey. Rey.” Ben whispered her name like raptures, as if her name were a word too holy to speak freely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know the usual bidness by now: [Chelsea's song "Hypnos"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwnolnhlwTk) matches this perfectly.

Rey felt like a guest in her own body as she traveled with Senator Organa back to the latter’s Manhattan office. She saw herself and each step, each smile, each quiet word of pleasant conversation with Ben’s mother as if from the other end of a long, dimly lit hallway.

How was this happening? How had she come this far and gotten to this point in time, exactly? It seemed downright impossible to Rey that she was here, now, with the woman responsible for giving birth to what was unarguably the greatest and only love of her short life—and yes, it was impossible even by her recent experience’s standards. This was _mundane_ impossible, the unexpected oddities of the every day world. Dire and dramatic as the Skywalker-Organa-Solo family dynamic was by their own admission, it still seemed a refreshing breath of histrionic air when compared to, say, dream mind melding and the utter transformation of a lonely soul.

Not that Senator Organa had to know about _that_. Rey wasn’t even sure how to explain that to her best friends yet.

Unfortunately, time would not wait for Rey to gather her bearings. She followed Senator Organa through the door to her office and was quickly led away to a room at the far end of the main hall. A man was already waiting for them inside. Rey looked him over as she took a seat across from him, offering him a small, fleeting wave and smile.

The man looked unbearably stressed; his thin, narrow face was fixed with seemingly permanent harassed expression. He had wide, golden horn-rimmed glasses and when he spoke it was with a delicate, almost tremulous voice. “It is _so_ nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand. Rey smiled wider at the accent, happy to hear a fellow English voice moored in the sea of New York tones. “Sean Trepeio, at your service. I am Senator Organa’s legal advisor—well, advisor to the Skywalker family in general, and often in matters that are far too often rather personal.”

“Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Rey said, leaning out of her seat to shake his hand.

Trepeio laughed. It brightened up his face considerably. He waited until Rey took a seat before he, too, sat down again. “I take it you are the young woman we’ve heard so much about?”

“Er, that depends on what you’ve heard,” Rey said, eyebrows raised.

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Leia said, cutting into the conversation. She shut the door behind her with a tight snap, sealing out the quiet cacophony of telephone chatter and gurgling coffee pots. She then took a seat next to Rey on the couch and sighed, settling into the cushions. “It’s all been good things, I promise. And that’s saying something. Ben never talks highly about anyone—mostly because he never talks.”

Rey’s heart skipped at the sound of his name. She pressed her hands between her knees to keep them from shaking.

“Yes, well… As long as we are free to discuss the subject, there is something I would like to bring to your attention, Senator.” Sean Trepeio cleared his throat, pinched the knees of his trouser to undo their tightness, and sat up a little straighter in his chair. He turned to Leia. “Naturally it would be in both your campaign and your son’s best interest if we kept his recent, er… troubles out of the public eye as much as possible. But I would not discount the very distinct possibility that someone has already leaked word of it to the press. I would also be very much amiss if I did not inform you, Senator Organa, that this could very well cost you the re-election—”

Leia held up her hands. Her fingers glittered with gold rings, most them simple and jewelless, yet still elegant. “I know how bad things _can_ be, Trepeio. Save your breath for telling me what we can _do_ about it.”

“Yes, Senator, of course!” Trepeio cleared his throat once again. “We do have a few points in our favor. Mr. Solo… _Ben_ voluntarily turned himself in and confessed.”

Rey stared at him, shocked. “He did? Why?”

“I'm not entirely sure. He seemed to be rather distraught when I spoke to him on the subject,” Trepeio said, frowning slightly, as if Rey’s confusion at Ben willingly turning himself over to justice was a troubling thing. “The only part that made any sense was his concern about _you_ , Ms. Doe. He heard about the apartment fire, you see, and worried that you might have been harmed in it. He seemed to think that your safety would be guaranteed if he turned himself in for what happened at Loft 444.”

“People in love never do have much sense,” Leia said with a smile. She turned the golden band on her left ring finger around and around, staring at it.

“Yes... quite,” Trepeio said. “But I would like to stress to you both that we can use this in our favor—in _your_ favor, Senator. Ben’s decision casts him in a sympathetic, dare I say contrite light. You will want to emphasize this angle considerably in the press, especially as it would help boost any points you might lose among the districts that lean towards red.” Trepeio cast a sympathetic glance at Leia as he spoke, waiting for her to nod before he continued. “And… I am afraid you will have to exercise some personal restraint, Senator. At least until this matter is settled.”

Leia’s dusty gray eyebrow quirked up. “Personal restraint?” she echoed. “Regarding what?”

“I understand that you have not seen your son in quite some time—”

“In _years_ , ‘Peio,” Leia interrupted. “I haven’t seen my son face to face for more than five minutes in _eleven years._ ”

“And you have my sincerest sympathies, Senator. Truly, you do. I have been a part of this family’s matters since—well, since you and your brother were children. I know how much Ben means to you, and how much it would also mean to have him close to you again. But that simply cannot be. Not now, not yet. Not until all of this trouble is cleared up.”

Trepeio waited for this to sink in before he delivered the rest of the unwelcome news. Rey had to give him credit—he spoke gently, giving Leia time to absorb what he was saying and make her peace with it.

“You will need to show yourself as more than just a concerned mother," Trepeio continued. "You are also an American citizen, a life-long New York resident. You should present yourself as a woman with absolute faith in our justice system, and in the court and the District Attorney that will bring the charges against your son. That is what I mean by personal restraint.”

Rey watched as Leia listened to all this with a deceptively calm expression. Her eyes lowered to the table between her and Trepeio, and she steadied her hands on her knees just quickly enough to suppress the tremors within. Rey knew that look. She had seen a shadow of it flicker across Ben’s own face when he was contemplative and grimly resolved, sealing his heart away into a decision that required the whole of it to be made.

As Leia's silence continued, Sean Trepeio leveled his bright gaze on Rey, taking her by surprise. “Which is where _you_ come in, Ms. Doe.”

She blinked. “Me?”

Trepeio nodded. “You are one of the few people who can speak in Ben’s defense, especially regarding his mental and emotional state these past few months. He has… er, suggested that the two of you are rather close, especially about the matters of his time as Snoke’s student.”

Rey quickly glanced over to Leia. Her expression was still unreadable. “Senator Organa said I might have to be a character witness,” she said.

“That’s only if Ben does not plead guilty and the case is taken to trial. I have strongly encouraged Mr. Solo not to let matters get that far. He has already shown remarkable responsibility by coming forward on his own—to _officially_ plead in any other way would make him look… unreliable.” Trepeio sighed. “The charges may sound intimidating, but I assure you it would be no difficult thing at all to reach a plea bargain with the DA.”

“So what’s the worst case scenario here?” Rey asked. “And please keep it simple.”

Trepeio’s smile was understanding. “He's looking at three years community service at the very best—or one year in prison, at the worst.”

Rey’s hands tightened. Leia seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. She had no trouble voicing it, either.

“And you don’t expect Ben to take your advice,” she said, leveling Trepeio with a stern gaze. It wasn’t a question, and there was a heavy, aching weariness in her voice.

“I believe you and I have discussed this already, Senator,” Trepeio said. “This is why you went to meet Ms. Doe, if I’m not mistaken?”

Leia shrugged. “I wanted to meet her before all this came up. Ami’s been over the moon about her for months, but Ben’s confession just gave me a reason to stop making excuses.” She paused, released a sigh, and turned to Rey. “So—full disclosure. As you can probably put together yourself based on ‘Peio’s rambles, we may _not_ need you as a witness.”

Rey wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or even more confused. “That’s only if Ben pleads guilty?” she asked. “But why would he have to? I thought he already confessed?”

“He did, but the DA’s getting all their evidence and ducks in a line before making it official. The fact that Ben is… obviously emotional doesn’t make his confession as simple as they’d like it to be. Or as he might have suspected.” Leia sighed. “Based on how Ben pleads, he’ll either have to go in again for a sentencing or a trial.”

“So then why am I here now?”

Leia’s eyes made a careful search of Rey’s expression before she answered. “Because I need you to make sure he pleads guilty,” she said quietly. “He could change his mind, and that would only be worse for him.”

As Rey began to squirm in her seat, Leia reached out to offer her hand. Only when Rey took it did she begin to speak again. “You _know_ him, Rey. Better than most—better than anyone else, though I’d hate to say it, being his mother. You understand him, and you also know how he can get when he’s… upset.”

Rey went very still. Leia’s navigation on the subject of Ben’s mercurial moods was as precarious as walking into a minefield blindfolded, yes, but even so… Even so, Rey wasn’t entirely sure she liked what she was hearing.

“Ben’s perfectly capable of making a rational decision, I assure you,” she said, closing her free hand into a fist. “He’s _ill_ , not mad.”

Leia stared at her. “And what do you call flying all over the world to burn down the galleries of your former teacher? A fit of pique?”

Rey waited until Leia’s eyes narrowed before she answered. “I call it justice,” she said. “Trust me—if you knew even half of what Snoke did to Ben, burning a few of his galleries in effigy is the _least_ that creature deserves.”

“Oh, dear,” Trepeio sighed, but Leia’s face did not break from its steely resolve.

“Rey,” she said in a tone that stopped the younger woman cold. “You may be the light of my son’s life but don’t you think for a second that I’ll let you speak to me that way about my own child.” She paused, and Rey did not use the silence to apologize. Leia continued, “Do not assume I had no idea what was done to him.” She tightened her hold on Rey’s hand, not hard enough to hurt and certainly not as a threat, but as a warning, stern and strong. “Do not assume I stood by and _let_ it happen, either. You know Ben as he is now. I knew him before, when he kept it all a secret. And by the time I found out—he vanished. Before I could say anything, before I could _do_ anything to help…”

Leia’s voice softened at the last few words, and though her eyes were wet with unshed tears, she refused to let them fall.

Rey was the one who offered her hand this time, and Leia took it, her face burdened with the heaviest of smiles.

“Did Ben ever tell you about his grandfather?” she asked, taking Rey by surprise.

“No. I saw a painting he did once, but he didn’t explain much about it.” Rey chewed on her lip. “Nor did I really want to ask. The painting was a little… dark.”

Leia’s mouth twitched. “Fitting. My father and Snoke were contemporaries—rivals and inspirations, all sorts of machismo nonsense like that. My father… He went by the name of Vader for a while. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

Reluctantly, Rey nodded. “I’ve seen his name in a few of my art history text books, but… they didn’t mention…”

“They didn’t mention he had a family,” Leia finished. “Well that’s nice of them. I’d say it was almost thoughtful if it wasn’t so helplessly delusional.”

“I don’t understand.”

“None of us does,” Leia said, and her smile brightened. The light of it never reached her eyes however, and Rey knew better than to be convinced. “And none of us ever will. Why do you think Luke’s gone off to be a hermit all these years? For his health?”

“… I want to say yes, but evidently I’d be wrong.”

Leia shrugged. “Well, who knows. Maybe he did. But if you ask me, it was so he could try to make peace with something that _demands_ you forgive it, instead of letting you make that decision yourself. And you have to give in to what it wants, if only so you can get through the day without screaming.”

Senator Organa very gently withdrew her hand from Rey’s grasp and turned to look at the wall on her right. A collection of family photographs was arranged at eye-level, some of them clearly dating back to Leia’s childhood. The photos ranged from her looking helplessly lonely, to plastered on school picture day smiles, to a face radiant with delight. The closest picture Rey could see was of Leia held aloft in a dark-haired woman’s arms. They wore matching smiles.

It was this photo Leia stared at as she spoke. “I can spend the rest of my life trying to understand why my father took the name Vader—which _means_ father, because no one said he had to be original—and yet acted like having children was nothing but a burden on his back. I can spend the rest of my life trying to understand why the man half responsible for Luke and me could single me out for the worst of his moods, and never come any closer to an answer that doesn’t make me want to shove my fist through a window.”

Leia tilted her head slowly. Her eyes narrowed as if a thought were tugging at her ear, eager to whisper its secrets to her. Or perhaps it was a memory. Rey watched as the older woman’s gaze misted over, but she kept her tears sealed within. “Very few men are meant to be fathers. But no girl asks to be a daughter. We’re made that way without permission. And then sometimes we're punished for it.”

Rey’s throat sealed shut. Oh how she knew how that felt better than anyone. She had to say something, _anything_. Even Trepeio looked utterly gutted by what he was hearing, though he was doubtless well acquainted with Leia’s sorrow by now.

Leia closed her eyes and took in a long breath. “But that’s all done with. Past, gone, buried." She opened her eyes. "I can’t keep dragging it out to hope for answers from a man long since good and dead. … And I _know_ that’s what Ben is going through. He doesn't have to be near me for me to know the pain he's feeling. That… that man, that _thing_ —Snoke—he hurt my baby, my _boy_.” The air around Leia's mouth seemed to crackle as she spoke, electric, wired, raw. “The one thing Han and I made together that always made me proud—and he was taken. _Broken_.”

A tense, fragile silence settled in the room. All the tears Rey heard in Leia’s voice were sliding down the younger woman’s face. As she moved to dry her eyes on her sleeve, Trepeio quickly turned to snatch up a box of tissues. He handed them to her with a warm, reassuring smile.

Leia recovered quicker than Rey could. “So when I say that Ben may change his mind because he’s upset, know that I’m speaking without judgment, Rey. He’s impulsive, reckless, hotheaded, utterly, impressively _stupid_ —just like the rest of this family. You add in trauma, you add in damage, and—well… we are, as Han once so eloquently put it, a walking mess factory.” She opened her hands and shrugged. “But we don’t always have to be. Which takes me back to you, Rey of sunshine.”

Rey fought back a smile. “Luke called me that too.”

“It’s catchy. It’ll stick.” Leia watched as Rey turned her balled up tissues around and around in her hands, fraying them to tatters. “I’m not asking for a miracle. I’m not asking you to lie or do anything I myself wouldn’t do if Ben would let me. I’m only asking for you to do your best. Talk to him. Get him to stick to the guilty plea. _Please_. For me.”

Rey leaned back in her seat and peered out the window stretched along the far-left wall. She hadn’t noticed until now that Leia’s office overlooked the polished and utterly dull streets of the Upper East Side. It made for very boring scenery, but Rey wasn’t interested in the view. She needed time to think, to decide.

She wasn’t sure how many minutes passed in silence, but by the time she stirred from her thoughts, Rey felt as if she had almost slipped into a dream. “Where’s Ben right now?” she asked.

“I had him bailed out the second Trepeio told me what happened,” Leia said, shifting her eyes over to the advisor. “He let me do _that_ much, at least. But Ben wouldn’t stick around. Said he wanted to lay low for a while, ‘til the arraignment.” She turned her eyes back to Rey. “He also said that if you wanted to find him, he’d be waiting for you in his studio.”

Rey stood up and looked between Leia and Trepeio. Her gaze was like her voice was like her heart: strong and steady. “Then that’s where I’ll be,” she said.

 

A cold, steady rain picked up as soon as the train left Atlantic Terminal for East Hampton Station. Rey watched the raindrops slide down the glass as she tried to trace it with her fingers.

A dreary gray sky was stretched overhead, with not a single crack across it to let the light shine through. Rey felt ragged, eager for sleep—but her heart was a cruel mistress, and it demanded the return of her mate without delay. She hadn’t seen Ben face to face, in the flesh, for six months. _Six months._ Half a bloody year. She would not wait another minute to see him, sleep and exhaustion and all other needs be damned.

As she fought off another yawn, Rey made a careful study of the train car around her. It was hard to believe she had made a similar journey to this very same station and back just half a year ago. So much had happened since then—so much space yawned between the woman Rey was in early Spring with who she was now, so much that it seemed hardly the same life at all.

Rey lowered her hand from the glass and watched as the urban blur of Nassau County slowly bled into Suffolk's thick, black clusters of trees. A strange thing, to walk in the same steps while not being the same person who first made them. Strange to retrace where you once were, all the while knowing that you are not and can never be who you used to be. Rey wondered if this was how it felt to look at photographs of yourself as a child years after they were taken, to know that you were, in in some way, looking back to a frozen sphere of time, a shrine made for and of and maybe even by you. The thought alone made her head spin.

There were no pictures of Rey as a child. Who would have taken them? Where would she have kept them for all these years? Until this past year, Rey had always believed that photographs seemed a silly thing to care about. Why would she want to look at the memories that were already burned within her brain? It was a question all too easily asked by someone who did not have many happy memories to begin with.

Ben, by contrast, had family photos in abundance. Whole pillars of his past were preserved forever in photo albums, in paintings, beneath panes of glass and hung like art upon his mother’s office wall… _For all the good that does them._

It seemed to Rey, as she sat there on the train thinking of days and darkness past, that her and Ben would be far better off making new memories together and preserving those in photographs. Once they were together again, and the whole business with these arson and criminal mischief charges were clear, the two of them could focus on their future happiness, using their time as lovers and artists as the foundation for such bliss.

Rey pulled her sleeve down over her hand and yawned into her fist. She was tired, so _tired_ —every limb seemed hewn from concrete, every bone made of lead. But she had to stay awake. She had to hone her mind to a fine, flinty point, and _focus_.

A confession, a trial. Crime and punishment. Sin and absolution. Rey knew in her heart of hearts that Ben was utterly justified in what he did, although it was admittedly easier to feel this way now that she knew no one had been harmed by what he’d done. But what mattered to her hardly seemed to fall in line with what the world cared about. Ben’s freedom, and the intensity of his punishment, hinged on both his ability and convincing capacity to depict himself as a man repentant and responsible—not a man for whom the past was a haunting, grim and dire, a past that was barely behind him at all.

Rey leaned her head against the window and shut her eyes. Ben was not guilty—not in the sense of having done something wrong and unforgivable on par with what was done _to_ him. But… guilty in the sense that yes, setting fire to almost half a dozen buildings was indeed a crime? Something he would have to pay for, even if only to keep his conscience clear? Well, obviously. Even love-sick Rey couldn’t deny that.

She viewed the matter with the sincere clarity of one for whom patience was a welcome visitor. It helped as well that Ben had already come forward and confessed. Though Rey couldn’t be sure until she spoke with him, that act alone seemed a promising indicator that he was ready to let old aches die, and become… well, become a man. Still, no matter what Leia had asked her to do, Rey knew that would not force Ben's hand. She would not make his choice for him. All she could do was meet the future as it came.

No matter what came next, Rey would not turn her back on the man who had given her hope for a future that was solid and clear. She would hold tightly to that hand, look deep into those eyes that she loved beyond compare, and hope he was ready to walk forward with her, into the future, into an endless path of tomorrows—into new memories that would be _theirs_ , and theirs alone. Together, together. Forever.

Forever.

 

The same cab with the same driver was waiting for Rey at East Hampton Station. Patterns upon patterns in loops and cycles. He didn’t recognize her, but that hardly mattered. She paid him twice the usual fare anyway.

As she slipped out of the car to stand at the end of the long drive leading up to Ben’s studio, Rey’s face remained a closely guarded secret, as were the thoughts within. The house was just the same as she remembered it—the same sleepy-eyed windows and dark sloping roof, the same a narrow little front door. But there was something off about the air here. Like a storm was lurking in the clouds, tucked inside the autumn chill.

Rey tilted her head and tried to make sense of this feeling. It wasn’t fear, no—more like… a sense of uneasy recognition. It was as if her knowledge about Ben’s past and his pain—of Snoke’s abuse, of the Skywalker-Organa-Solo legacy of secrets and shame—had somehow introduced her to a deeper, darker layer of the world. And that layer responded to her with the wariness of a newcomer treading old, sacred ground.

The house hunched on the waterfront like a beast tensed to spring. She felt its eyes on her as she marched up the path and came to a stop in front of the door. Rey _felt_ the door shrink back from her hand, and so she ran her fingers across it slowly, stroking away its raised hackle nerves and fear.

Rey pressed her mouth to where the door fit the frame, shut her eyes, and breathed in deep. Woodsmoke. Mint. Sandalwood. Ben’s scent—familiar, soothing.

Tears burned in her eyes. He was really here, just beyond that door. After all this time, he was close enough to soon touch.

Rey’s heart ached at the thought of all those days they had spent apart, and all they had learned from that distance. The space between them had not been space at all, not really, but the weavework of strings and tethers, the pattern of two hearts bound by a phantom thread.

Yet still, even after all this time… Rey could not bring herself to move.

It was Ben, in the end, who opened the door. It was Ben who crossed the threshold dividing them and bent to fold Rey in his arms. It was Ben who whispered words of welcome in her ear, as if _she_ had been the one gone for half the year, carving a path of destructive absolution through galleries that were palaces to pain and cruelty.

“Rey. _Rey._ ” Ben whispered her name like raptures, as if her name were a word too holy to speak freely.

Rey tilted his face down to hers and pressed her forehead to his. “How can I say I’ve missed you when you’ve been with me all along?” she asked, shutting her eyes. “But I _did_ miss you. Being without you was like breathing through a drowned lung.” She opened her eyes and tapped her fingers against his cheek, privately delighted to see he had kept the stubble. It was the lightest of slaps, but his eyes burned with a hunger that made her want to do it again, only harder. “Never do that to me again.”

Ben ran his fingers through her hair, pressing them to her tear-stained cheeks. “You got through it just fine,” he said, with his usual deadpan honesty. “You survived—we both did.” His dark eyes searched her face. There was something different about his gaze now—they glowed with their own deeper, brighter light, a kind Rey had never seen before. They were like lanterns in the distance on a moonless night, quietly defying the darkness while also giving it shape.

Rey warmed herself in the heat of his gaze. “Welcome back,” she said, and held his face steady. They kissed slow and somehow chaste, despite all the passion and fury and _need_ lying between them. It was the kiss of a suitor quietly come to declare his heart to _la belle dame_ avec _merci_ , the kiss of a fairytale prince come to wake the princess from her ensorcelled sleep. A kiss, as Louis Armstrong once sang, to build a dream on.

Then, to her surprise, Ben swept Rey into his arms and stepped forward and back—over the threshold once, and then once again. "Welcome _home_ ," he said, carrying her inside the house and kicking the front door shut.

She laughed and pressed her lips to his neck. “Do you know that your mum said I’m practically her daughter-in-law?” she asked before she could reconsider how he might react to such a statement. She didn’t quite fancy the idea of Ben dropping her on the ground in shock, and so it was for this reason and surely nothing more that made Rey curl her arms around his neck and quickly turn to face him.

Ben got the hint at once and guided her legs around his waist. She crossed her ankles at his back and gave him another kiss. “Well?” she asked.

He smiled, watching Rey as she shook out her rain-soaked hair. “Was that before or after she told you off for getting all the usual relationship milestones out of order?”

Rey frowned. “She said that to you?”

Ben shrugged, careful not to dislodge Rey from the balance of his arms. “Right after I told her you were the one person I wanted to love for the rest of my life,” he said, raising his eyebrows and his voice both. He mimicked his mother’s voice and said, “ _’Did you even get a ring yet? Isn’t there a song about something like that? Wait—don’t tell me. She’s not in a_ family way _, is she? Good god, Ben, you_ would _make me a grandmother without first letting me know you’re dating again._ ’”

Rey bit her lip to keep the laughter in. “We did sort of sprint right into… all this.” She nodded at him, gently bumping her nose against his. “What with dreams and soul-searching and all sorts of impossibly dramatic things. I’m fairly sure that’s not how falling in love goes for most people."

“Rey.” Ben looked into her eyes and waited. Her heart squirmed in her chest. “We are _not_ most people.”

This, finally, made her laugh. It was so simple, so true. Rey's laughter turned into a quiet, appreciative hum as Ben carried her like a groom carried his bride further within the walls of their home— _theirs_ now, together, two pieces and two lives fused. Rey knew these walls, knew this home—it was the place where the darkness had first beckoned to her, where the stark, striking separation of light and shadow had made itself known as the dividing conquerors of Ben’s soul. She knew as well that this was the first place Ben sought shelter after his time with Snoke, that these familiar walls became a haven where he could paint his pain and make use of the cruelty embedded within him in a way that would harm and haunt no one—no one but himself.

Rey suppressed a shiver as Ben carried her up the stairs to the second floor. Would that awful painting still be up here? _What the pupil sees_ … And what would _she_ see now, here, in this shelter born of shadows, of pain and bitterness sealed in paints and primers, charcoal and canvas, like a corpse in a shroud?

 _The kind of murder where nobody dies…_ Rey shut her eyes and took in a breath. “Ben?” The word squeezed out of her, a frightened wisp of a thing.

“Yes?”

“What happened with Snoke? Did you… did you ever find him?”

For a long time, Ben did not answer. He set Rey down on her feet at the top of the stairs and lowered his gaze, shielding his face in the folds of his long, wavy hair. Still silent, Ben led her into the wall-less room that once housed his paintings. She noted with a quiet pang of surprise that Ben had pushed them all to one side to make room for all new furniture. A desk, a standing closet, and a small, squat dresser were carelessly arranged around a black canopy bed as dark as a night that had never known the glow of stars. The only color in the room were the pillows on the bed: they were the deepest, richest blue Rey had ever seen, and their corners were stitched with deep silver crescent moons.

Rey climbed onto the bed, feeling suddenly impossible small. It was _massive_ —and almost unbearably soft.

Ben sat down on the very edge of the bed, his broad, rigid back turned to her. She watched as his hands opened and closed in his lap like a lotus blossom, budding, blooming, then closing within itself.

“I couldn’t find him,” he said at last, in a threadbare, barren voice. “Not a trace, not a hint… He’s just… gone.” Ben pressed his hands to his face and held them there for a long time. When he spoke, his voice cracked like a wound bleeding anew. “He had no family, no friends—no one could have taken him in. Hux and Phasma don’t know where he is. Even his fuckin' spokesperson, that worthless sack, has no idea what happened. It’s like he just disappeared.”

Rey crawled across the space between them and pressed her cheek against Ben's back. She could feel his heart beating against her, hammering on his bones and blood. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him so close, so tight. “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said, rocking him gently, to soothe all the aches inside. “Now you can get rid of it and walk away. For good.”

Ben shook his head. “You don’t _understand_ ,” he said, crying in earnest. “How can I ever move on when I don’t know for sure he _won’t_ be back? You don’t—you don’t _know,_ Rey. You don’t know for how long I've wanted him broken and bloody on the ground at my feet—how long I've waited and wanted to be the one to put him there.” His breath struggled against his tears, but grief was a godless thing—it knew no master, no mercy, had no care to pack up and leave when it was a clear trespasser. Ben fought against both his sobs and his need to breathe, yet he did the best he could to manage both and still speak. “How can I live if he’s not dead?”

Rey held on tight to her dearest love, syncing to the sway of his grief. She closed her hand over his heart, pressing down hard enough so that she could feel the beat of his pulse in her own veins, knocking like fists against her teeth. “I love you too much to lie to you, Ben. And the truth is you’ll just have to live. You have to—what other choice do you have? No, _listen_ to me,” she said as he began to pull away. “Too much of your life was made to bend and break at the shape of him. Enough is enough. No more. You deserve better. You _deserve_ your life. And maybe you can never be sure that he won’t come back for you. And maybe you’ll never know if he’s dead. But so what? You cannot cling to his life and hope for closure—trust me, _I know._ ” She let the word fill up the room around them, let him feel the weight of it, the truth. Then Rey took a breath and started again.

“My parents were like a claw that caught and cradled me, that held me close and tore me open, over and over again.” She shut her eyes and listened to his heart within her, how it beat perfectly in time with her own. “I spent years holding onto them, years hoping they’d come find me, that they’d care. And they never did. I lost years of my life waiting for them to _make_ my life have meaning. And I can never get any of those years back. I don’t want you to do that. I love you too much to ever lie to you, Ben, and trust me when I say I take no pleasure in telling you this, but you’ll just have to live knowing you can _never make peace with it_. All you can do is rip out the roots of fear as they grow in your heart and you _live with it_ —because that’s what life _is._ Life is for living, and the dead and gone, the past and the ghosts that lie there, will have no say over it.”

Ben grabbed Rey’s hand and held it to his lips. His kiss was fierce, prickled with teeth. “Then what was it all _for_?” he wept, bitter, brutal, a desperate man on his knees, begging for one prayer to matter. “Why the fuck did I even bother with—with any of it? Why did I even leave you for so long if it was for nothing?”

Rey had an answer—just as she knew that Ben had the truth buried in him, too. He just couldn’t come to it as easily as she had. “Tell me about the paintings you burned.”

“What does that have to do with…?” Ben shut his mouth into a thin line and sighed. “I finished them on Shelter Island. Snoke watched over me while I painted them, but he directed every move, chose every color, filled in every blank, open space.” He pressed his pain into Rey’s skin, clutching tightly to her hand. His hurt met her courage and cracked apart, breaking under the pillar of her patience.

Ben continued, his voice quiet. “And when I was done, he put his name on all those paintings. He took credit for _my_ work. And the one time I had the nerve to ask why he didn’t just paint on his own, he laughed in my face. _‘Why pass up the chance to make use of a perfectly willing instrument?’_ ” Ben snarled the words that were burned upon his memory and then took a long, shuddering breath against Rey’s hand. He pressed it to his face like a mask. “I gave away all I had to him, and in the end I was only ever a _tool_ , just a—a _thing_. A blank, black space where he could sink his hands.” He laughed, mirthless, bitter. “Of _course_ he’d steal my work and say it was his own. What the hell did I expect?”

“But you burned them all,” she said, kissing the back of his neck. “You turned them all to ash, to dirt—and now here you are, safe, alive. Free.”

Ben spent several minutes of silence struggling to control his breathing. Once he was calm again, he turned to fold himself in Rey’s arms as much as he could fit. She clutched him tight and sank into the black velvet bed, stroking Ben’s hair, tasting his tears, taking each trembling breath from his kiss-starved lips.

“He’ll never get near you again,” she whispered, slipping her words into the silence between them as an offering, a prayer. “I won’t let him. I promise, I _swear_ —I’ll tear him down myself if it comes down to it. But I don’t think it will.” Rey stretched her arms out as Ben settled against her, curling up on her chest, sliding his arms around her back, over her shoulder. “Ben… I love you too much to lie to you, so believe me when I say you’ve done all you could, and now you have to bury it. Bur him. Bury Kylo Ren and the boy who died before he ever lived. Bury it. Mourn. And live.”

Rey’s throat was soaked in the benediction of his tears. She held him oh so tight, letting him listen to her heart, letting him witness how hard it beat for him and him alone. “He’s gone now—gone and done, and the past is dead. Now come back to me. Come back.”

At first, for a long gasp of time, Ben’s shoulders shook with the quiet fury of his sobs. In time, in the slow march of minutes, his tears that were years in the making finally pulled up short, then stopped altogether. Then, gradually, gracefully, as easy as a sigh, the two of them fell into the open heart of sleep, where Hypnos, the god of this hushed, simple death, lay waiting to grant them the gift of this perfect tiny peace. It would not last past sunrise, but the long night was time enough to heal.

And so there they slept, heart to heart, beloved on beloved, and woke to face the waiting day braver, healed, whole—together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> juuuuuuuuust barely got this one posted before i completely collapsed with exhaustion lmao. ONE MORE CHAPTER LEFT Y'ALL, WE CAN DO THIS, I PROMISE.
> 
> also, i fully admit to knowing dick-all about the justice system in ny state (despite... living here...), so i did a little research and then chose to just sensationalize it for drama. like a police procedural. it's fine.
> 
> and sean trepeio is indeed meant to be in some way a version of c-3po. i did my best--i think he got the better end of the deal here. i mean, bb-8's a diner.


	13. So lovely wherever you are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Later, in the tender silence, Ben spoke again. “I thought I’d lost you. In the fire—at the apartment. I thought—” he paused, sought the words, and failed. Grief can be a godless thing, too proud to fit itself into any word or sound. His sigh burst across the back of Rey’s neck, scattering her hair, baring her skin. He kissed his way down the slope of her back, and as he went, he said, “Do you think that was really him? In the studio?”
> 
> “I do,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t change anything I said last night.”
> 
> “I know.” Ben pressed his cheek against her neck as he curled up against the shape of her. “Life is for living, and that’s what I have to do. What we have to do.”
> 
> “Together,” Rey said, her voice heavy with sleep.
> 
> “Together,” Ben said, and he followed her into a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... here it is, folks. The End.
> 
> As always, please give [this accompanying song a listen.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxFvQka4qMA)

 

 

> Well I wake up another day  
>  Knowing I lost you along the way  
>  When you came for me I was not ready  
>  When you called I was not able to move  
>  When I ran from you I lost my head  
>  Thought I couldn't belong to anyone  
>  And the anger flowed like a river  
>  And the water tasted like your love  
>    
>  But we're gonna run  
>  And we'll chase the sun  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  Where we're from  
>    
>  How could a name carry so much weight?  
>  I hear it calling me awake  
>  I hear the rhythm of your heart  
>  Oh my daddy you tear me apart  
>  Oh my daddy my desert star  
>  Must be so lovely wherever you are  
>  And your flame it stays inside my head  
>  It makes everything else so dim  
>    
>  But we're gonna run  
>  And we'll chase the sun  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  Where we're from  
>    
>  But we're gonna run  
>  And we'll chase the sun  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  Where we're from  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  Where we're from  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west  
>  All the way back to the west
> 
> \-- Chelsea Wolfe, _Flame_

* * *

 

The next morning, Ben’s East Hampton studio waited until he and Rey were safely outside before it gave up the ghost, shed its mortgage coil, and dissolved. Completely.

That is the only word to describe it: dissolved. The late October rain fell slanted and sharp like silver bullets, and before their wide, watchful eyes, the narrow, sleepy-eyed house rippled like a lake after a stone’s throw. Over and over again the house trembled, and with the sigh of a life long separated from, and finally acquainted with, peace, the house that Ben’s grandfather built folded itself up like a self-packing suitcase and simply… seeped away. Like ink in water. Like smoke in a misty fog.

The house itself was now gone, but every piece of furniture within it crashed to the ground with a clatter, breaking, splintering. Without the world of a house to hold them aloft, the objects within had nowhere to go but down.

Ben broke the silence with a laugh. “Great. Perfect. How the hell am I gonna explain this to Mom?”

Rey took his hand. “We’ll just have to come up with something extra convincing,” she said.

They both fell quiet again, listening to the hiss and hush of the Atlantic as it lapped the shore down past the dunes. It was not a peaceful moment, with the wind tearing at their faces, with the rain clattering on their backs, but neither of them felt a thing like fear. How could they be afraid? Hope was so much stronger than fear could ever be.

Ben tilted his head against the wind. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

Rey held her breath. Listened.

A wet, raspy laugh was calling out from somewhere in the ruins of Ben’s studio. The concrete foundation, strewn as it was by broken debris, suddenly seemed to take the shape of a nest. It matched the awful sounds coming from within, as if it were the assembled sanctuary of a bird of prey.

Thinking of vultures, whole kettles of them circling around a carrion dinner, Rey let go of Ben’s hand and walked into the ruins alone. The toe of her boots scattered torn canvas clumps, broken wood, and shattered glass with every decisive step.

The laughter paused. She heard a rattling howl build strength like a scream in reverse and held her own breath, listening close. The sound was coming from the wreckage of the canopy bed.

Rey’s hands were steady as she shifted the sodden sheets and twisted blankets aside. Even before she laid eyes on the creature in the ruins, she knew in her heart who— _what_ —she would see.

Her first thought as she stared at the crooked, beady eyes of the miserable broken mass of flesh, was of the mummified remains found in Loft 444. A part of Rey, tucked carefully inside the sleeve of hope, far from the reach of her doubts, had hoped those remains would be _him_. Snoke. She had hoped with a bitterness that tread the line of hate that he had succumbed either to guilt or a fit of glory, and sealed himself away inside his gallery like a dark saint moldering in his reliquary.

And who knows? Perhaps time and modern forensics would prove her hopes true. But she had the luxury of neither at the moment, and so she stood there, dripping with the rain, deafened by the roar of the sea as it swept closer, closer, and wondered how a man so tenacious of life could not learn to make his peace with it. Her skin was as sleek and strong as steel, and she looked down upon the writhing, shriveled lump that had once barely been a man without a sliver of doubt in her heart.

She knew what she had to do.

Rey moved on instinct, following the call of a force that eluded the power of words. It was this force that guided her body as she rolled back her shoulders, took a breath, and brought down her heel as hard as she could.

It was easy, so easy. Like blinking, like breathing. Whatever was left of Snoke cracked beneath her heel like an egg on the side of a countertop. Quick, ruthless, a whole world shattered with just a snap of the wrist.

“I warned you,” Rey said, her voice carried off by the wind. “I told you. I did. Your life would pay the price. And so it is, and so it is.”

As she spoke, she ground her heel hard against the dirt and dust, the clumps of ash and wet concrete. Again and again she twisted her boot, as if scraping filth from the bottom of it, until finally—finally there was nothing left but an oozing black smear.

Ben approached in a few long strides and quiet steps. After a moment, he said, “The rain should take care of the rest.”

Rey nodded, and turned to take his hand. They took their leave, and the rain and devouring sea took the rest.

 

With few options left to them, Rey and Ben returned to his mother’s Manhattan office.

“HQ,” she breathed in mock solemnity.

Ben scowled as he followed her into the elevator. “I’d rather be out in the rain,” he groused.

Rey stared at him. “No you wouldn’t.”

He held her stare for as long as he could. It took five floors for Ben to break free of his own mask. “No,” he sighed, echoing her words. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“She loves you, Ben. Talk to her—or just listen if that’s easier.”

“None of this is easy.”

“Nothing worth doing ever is.”

Ben turned to peer at his warped reflection in the metal door. Rey watched as his haunted expression gradually gave way, dissolving like a drop of rain bleeding into a wider pool of water. It wasn’t long before Ben’s heart chased the ghosts of his fear away, and in a single breath, in a blink, his graveyard grim expression was replaced by the soft, insistent intensity of a single burning flame.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked, his voice whisper low, trembling, almost timid.

Rey nodded. “Of course,” she said. “If that’s what you want.”

“Please.” The word had such a weight, though it was barely louder than a sigh.

It was an easy vow to make, to stay with him, and only a little difficult to practice. As soon as they reached their destination, Rey took hold of Ben’s hand and gave it a tight squeeze.

Leia was waiting for them. Of course. She took one look at her son and, as soon as he stepped out of the elevator—nudged along by Rey’s other hand, pressed against his back—greeted him with the softest of smiles. Her quick brown eyes took in Ben’s face, the scruff, the smears of dirt, the rosy tinge around his eyes—that telltale sign of tears.

After a long, thoughtful pause, Leia held out her arms. “Please tell me you didn’t burn the studio down too,” she said.

Ben made himself as small as he could to fit into his mother’s embrace. “I didn’t burn the studio down,” he said.

Leia shot an expectant glance over to Rey.

She nodded. “Technically the ocean did it,” she said. It wasn’t a lie, not really. She just carefully cropped out the part where the house disappearing first. “I showed up just in time to watch the tide take away what was left.”

Leia’s arms tightened around her son for just a moment, and no longer. She stepped back and peered once more into his face. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m alive,” Ben said after giving the answer some thought. Then he added, in a private voice meant for mother and son alone, “I missed you, Mom.”

Leia’s responding, radiant smile was as soft as her voice. “Welcome back, Ben. Welcome _home._ ”

 

Later, after much deliberation about where Ben should go next, one short argument, and a weary sigh as Trepeio admitted that it was too late in the campaign for any _more_ harm to be done, Ben and Rey curled up on the office couch, eager for sleep. It was not exactly a comfortable fit, but they did not mind. They were together, and that simple fact would get them through any trouble that lay ahead. Especially ones like tiny couches. And the privacy of this small, sheltered office was theirs alone to share.

Ben pressed his chest to Rey’s back on what little space the couch allowed them, and slid his hands across her waist. He fit his lips to her ear. “I thought you said you wouldn’t lie?” he whispered.

Rey took one of his hands in hers and put it to her lips. She let him feel every word as she gave them life. “I love you too much to lie _to_ you. Not _for_ you.” She guided his hand to her throat, down to her breast, so he could hold her heart. “Secrets are for keeping, my only mine. And the truth of that house, from the darkness within to its last dying gasp, is _our_ secret. Yours. Mine.” Rey shut her eyes as Ben slid his thumb across her chest, stroking her and the wild warmth within.

Later, in the tender silence, Ben spoke again. “I thought I’d lost you. In the fire—at the apartment. I thought—” he paused, sought the words, and failed. Grief can be a godless thing, too proud to fit itself into any word or sound. His sigh burst across the back of Rey’s neck, scattering her hair, baring her skin. He kissed his way down the slope of her back, and as he went, he said, “Do you think that was really him? In the studio?”

“I do,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t change anything I said last night.”

“I know.” Ben pressed his cheek against her neck as he curled up against the shape of her. “Life is for living, and that’s what I have to do. What _we_ have to do.”

“Together,” Rey said, her voice heavy with sleep.

“Together,” Ben said, and he followed her into a dream.

 

On the day of Ben’s sentencing, Rey sat in the gallery, one hand in Leia’s, the other in Luke’s. The news of Leia’s successful re-election—she had won by a small margin, but narrow victories were victories all the same—just barely overshadowed the scandal of her wayward son facing two criminal charges. But Leia took it all with an easy grace.

“I’ve had to spin worst things,” she’d said on their way to the court.

“A born politician—that’s what you are, sis,” Luke mumbled in reply, but he was smiling as he said it.

Leia rolled her eyes. “One of us had to get some smarts in this family. You’d already hogged all the righteous indignation.”

Luke laughed, running his fingers across his newly shaven cheek. “At least we’ve still got our looks,” he said, his eyes glittering. And the twins broke into louder peals of laughter, their eyes lined with crow’s feet, their gray hair glinting in the sunlight.

Rey thought back to that laughter, to the quiet comfort of family bliss, as she kept her eyes on Ben’s back. If Ben’s own mother could keep her nerves in check, then Rey could damn well do the same. Even so, her heart seized up with every minute that passed, and she barely allowed herself to breathe.

“And how does the defendant plead?” the judge asked.

Ben’s voice cut through the courtroom in a single slice. “Guilty, your Honor.”

The judge nodded, Ben took his seat, and the prosecutor—Maz Kanata, the DA herself—rose to her feet. She was so short that it hardly seemed to matter.

“Your Honor, the prosecution has agreed to settle,” she said. Her voice was fluid, a lightly accented lilt. “Ben Solo has proven he both understands and is eager to take responsibility for his actions. And with this in mind, we stand with the defense in the belief that the best option now is to grant redemption, not punishment.”

“What are the terms of the settlement?”

“Three years community service—and mandatory psychological counseling.”

The judge nodded, and turned his eyes back to Ben. “Will the defendant please rise.” A command, not a question.

Ben slid back to his feet.

“Ben Solo, on the charges of arson in the fifth degree, and criminal mischief in the fourth degree, this court hereby finds you guilty.” He paused to let the words sink in. “Following the agreement of the settlement, you are sentenced to three years of community service, and must seek psychiatric care immediately.” The judge paused, then he picked up his gavel and cleared his throat. “This court is dismissed,” he said, and the gavel fell like a stone.

Only then did Rey finally relax.

 

The next four months pass by in a blur. We will do our best to describe it.

Ben returns to his uncle Luke’s art therapy clinic, as per the terms of his settlement, and together they find… not peace, no, but a sort of tilted kindness. An understanding too fragile for words. They do not speak of it, and neither shall we.

It is in the midst of this that Ben Solo—nee Kylo Ren—debuts a new art exhibit, his first in six years. It takes place in his first privately owned gallery, Rinne.

On the night of February 14th 2019, the glass doors of Rinne open with a sigh, like a dream unfolding its arms and asking you to come inside. The gallery will admit all and every, free of charge. There is, of course, food and drink provided _gratis._ This is a feast, a celebration. None will be denied.

At first glance, the exhibit seems a tribute to both a haunted house and the minotaur’s labyrinth. Long unlit corridors with narrow walls that bend and bow force all wanderers to stumble sightless into total darkness. Some of them take out their phones or flick open lighters to light the way. They cluster around the comfort of glow and flame, and together they all find a way. Perhaps that is the only point of darkness: to find a way.

By this miracle of perseverance, all the visitors turn a corner and now find themselves in the exhibit’s central, sole room. Television screens align the walls, playing looping clips of grainy videos just slightly out of sync, to give the impression that the images inside are passing behind the walls in a dance, a circle. The video’s color bleeds blue like an ocean’s wound—a blue haze, a white light, or perhaps more like the night sky on a moonless midnight—and a close-up of a young woman’s face soon emerges. Her voice is the only sound in the room, apart from the footsteps of the guests.

“Oh my daddy, my desert sun,” she sings, her voice thin like air. Her words break in the eager listeners’ ears, filling them with honey, with music. “Must be so lovely wherever you are.”

It is here where the video skips, like a wound in the groove of a record. The woman’s song loops in perpetuity, endless, eternal. If the curious guests’ gazes slide to the white placards fixed to the right of the screens, they will find a handwritten note attached. _What the lover sees_ —no doubt the title of this piece.

The rest of the walls are a collection of Ben Solo’s work, what little of it could be salvaged from the ruins of the apartment fire and the studio-swallowed sea. He has not done a thing to repair them, has not attempted to make them presentable to the guests’ gaze. It is for the best, we think. These paintings are all the more striking for their flaws and ruination. They are veterans of destruction, survivors of tragedy and flame.

But it is the center of the room that soon holds the eye of every guest within. A half circle of words are painted across the floor in a careful, flowing hand. They declare this as the _pièce de résistance_ —a literal, living, breathing masterpiece. If you look closely, you can see that she is the same woman as the one in the video. This is the one time where staring is not rude, but encouraged.

The woman is painted from the crown of her forehead to the tip of her booted foot in powder white. She gleams like a snowdrop in the light. Upon her head, no, bursting from it like a shattering of stars, is a veil, a corona, a saint’s crown. She is the Light Herself, Triumphant. She is Snow White, newly freed from her glass coffin. Simply, she is a living statue, a patiently waiting canvas.

There is an apple in the shape of a heart sitting in her hand, and by some strange device, it flutters, it bleeds, it beats in the cradle of her palm. Drops of blood spill and splatter on the floor, and whomever they strike has been forever marked by her bared heart, by this blood, by this art, forever. Forever.

The woman blinks, slowly, with exquisite care. Her eyelids are shadowed with the silver blush of winter’s rouge, and her breath, when it comes, is in the slowest of cycles, barely enough to disturb the tight white bodice seemingly sewn seamlessly into her painted skin. She is wearing layers of veils and tulle that glimmer like a snow-field under the bright, blinding moon.

As the woman holds up her heart-bound hand, a tall man dressed as dark as a shadow, with a black veil crowning his bowed head, steps in from a corner of the room. Has he been there all along? Was he hiding in plain view? We cannot say, for the guests cannot be sure themselves. He approaches the living Snow White and takes the apple-heart from her hand. His long, thick fingers may seem too ungainly, too rough, to ever deserve to draw near her, but do not be so quick to dismiss. There is no thing in the world that has no beauty in it. Please remember that.

There is a tenderness in the man’s strength, and it is plain for every eager eye to see that he is gentle with her, so gentle—as gentle as a gasp upon splintered glass. The veiled man, his brow hidden in a gossamer shadow, now frees a long, thin brush and jar of ink from the dark folds of his sleeve. He dips the bristles into the moonless-night-black ink, and brings the brush up to the swell of the woman’s breast. Just over the space where her own heart beats quietly out of sight, like a secret that is hers alone to keep.

Not a lung in the room dares to drag in a breath. Not an eye blinks. Not a soul stirs. Every guest stands as a witness to this vulnerable moment as the brush inches closer to the blank white space awaiting it.

Look closely. Do you see? It is the hand holding the brush that trembles, not the woman. It is the hand of the veiled man that is awed by the act. And it is here that we see the power of patience, the deceptive, but not malicious, might of passivity. Snow White stands staring into the shrouded shadow of the man—shall we call him a prince? No? Too bad—who dares disturb her silence, her blank white space, and she wears a lover’s waiting gaze.

Her face slowly slips from the grip of her granite artifice, and her nose crinkles. Her mouth gives way to the wide white burst of her smile. “Go on,” we hear her say, her gold-brown eyes glittering bright. “Before the ink drops.”

The veiled man does not make his Galatea wait. No, this hushed Pygmalion commits himself to what he began with a wordless, worshiping reverence. The brush meets the woman’s chest, and the ink spills into an artless scrawl like a stamp over her heart.

Is it a word? Is it a name? Is it a symbol? There is no answer. Every eye who sees this small slip of darkness gazes upon a different shape. A lost name, a past love, a forgotten dream, a black bud sitting in a gloom called grief, not yet ready to bloom. The truth of this is not for speaking—what each guest with each eye and two pupils see is a secret, and such mysteries are made to be hidden. It is a marriage between the mind and the roots of the heart because, after all, secrets are made for keeping.

When every eye in the room has had a long enough look, the lights, to a bulb, go out at once. Guests shriek in the sudden shadows, purses are clutched tight, and just before the confusion can create contempt, the lights come on again.

The world returns, and the _pièce de résistance_ has transformed into a _Pietà._ Snow White wears the veil now, and the dark prince with his long, pale, clean-shaven face is shown at last. It is the artist himself, of course, lying tender and quiet in the cradling arms of his beloved.

There is no applause at this reveal. But this is no bother. Silence itself is also a sound—waiting, watchful. Silence, like the shadows, listens and understands. That is the point of the exhibit after all. It is a lesson born of pain, made with passion, and given as a gift of peace.

It may take some time for your eyes adjust to the light on the way out. Please watch as your step as you leave.

 

“Marry me,” Ben said, washing the last of the paint from Rey’s hair.

She glanced at him over her shoulder, letting the sound of the shower fill up the silence. “Are you asking me or telling me?” she laughed.

“Neither.” Ben lifted up her left hand and kissed every finger. “I’m begging. Marry me. Please.”

Rey traced her fingers across his brow, like a blessing, a cleansing. He shut his eyes and held his breath, waiting, listening.

“Yes,” she whispered at last, her heart bleeding into the word. “Yes, yes. _Yes._ ”

They are long gone come the morning sun—they are headed west right into it, as fast as a hastily-acquired rental car can run. They chase the sunlight back to its burning bright bed and are married in the city of sin a day and a half later. It is a joke they share, about the heart’s abyss and the red, gleaming thread that helped guide them from the depths of it. Their wedding official, the ubiquitous Elvis impersonator that is as trite and true as Vegas Herself, shares with them a knowing smile. Of course he understood.

And when they finally kiss as man, as bride—as husband, as wife—their lips consumed the last of their gloom and grief. The light in their love burned out every clutching claw of shadow, every last trace of their silent screams, and for as long as Ben and Rey both lived forever and on and beyond, the darkness troubled them no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things before the real finale.
> 
> Rinne is taken from the BUCK-TICK song "loop." Sakurai-san chants it in the background, layered underneath him reciting a poem about love and rebirth. When translated, rinne (pronounced like ri-n-nay) means samsara/the transmigration of a soul through reincarnation. It seemed utterly fitting for Ben's emergence as an artist in his own right.
> 
> Pièce de résistance literally means "piece which has staying power." The thematic echoing to Rey being part of the ST's Resistance is, of course, completely intentional. Pieta is a famous statue Michelangelo made of the Virgin Mary mourning Jesus after he was taken off the cross.
> 
> The art exhibit is described in second person plural present tense because the Force is talking. I wanted to create the impression that you, the reader, are being guided through the exhibit. I hope it worked.
> 
> This is the second time I've had to write this note. My computer crashed when I first tried to post this chapter, necessitating a total rewrite. I guess it didn't want to say goodbye, either.
> 
> I started writing this fic two weeks ago because my feelings about Rey, Ben/Kylo, and this ship were almost overwhelming. I loved them so much, and loved their love to the point of distraction, so... I had to do something about it. Thus, this fic. I made the story up as I went, with only the vaguest of outlines to follow. Mostly I was just chasing after really intense images that popped up in my head, and so I kept writing so I could get to those scenes. The story built itself up around those moments. I'm sure the "flying by the seat of my pants" plotting probably showed. Sorry about that.
> 
> I was diagnosed with BPD last year (after many years of a wrong diagnosis which helped with nothing), which is co-morbid with abuse-related PTSD. To say that I poured a lot of my own grief and anger and frustration about the healing process into this fic would be both honest and somehow a little embarrassing. I tried not to blend too much of my personal problems into the story, but it seemed a strangely perfect fit for the two of them. I hope I can heal like them someday, too.
> 
> It was snowing two weeks ago when I started writing this. I woke up this morning to see yet another snowstorm outside my window. The sun's out as I type this, and it's warm enough that the snow is already starting to melt away. Another strangely fitting thing: snow is like a blank slate, washing everything clean. Perfect for this ending.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this. Thank you to everyone who left comments along the way. Thank you to anyone who finds it long after it's been posted. I'm so grateful to you all, even more than I have the ability to describe.
> 
> Take care of yourselves. Life is for living, so we'd better get started, don't you think?
> 
> \-- Kristin.


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